Black Phoenix
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash, sequel to Easy as Falling. Not only humans were watching on that day the world changed. Now Harry's balancing delegations, work, romance, and trying to keep his phoenix from eating people. Hard work for a Benevolently Snarky Dark Lord.
1. The Inevitable

**Title: **Black Phoenix

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione, Lucius/Narcissa

**Warnings: **Violent, some angst, somewhat crackish humor

**Rating: **R

**Summary: **Humans weren't the only ones watching the day the world changed, and now Harry is receiving delegations from those magical creatures interested in joining his court. Meanwhile, he's got to deal with the Ministry, the upcoming election, keeping his relationship with Draco secret, and keeping his phoenix from eating people. And that's in his _spare _time.

**Author's Notes: **This is the sequel to _Easy as Falling,_ and thus the second prequel to my one-shot "Charming as He Needs To Be." I suggest reading both of those if you haven't yet.

**Black Phoenix**

_Chapter One—The Inevitable_

"The _Daily Prophet _wants an interview." Briseis swept her braid over her shoulder and consulted the list in her hand. Harry suspected it was a list of names. Or maybe tasks. Briseis was so organized she might have his life planned out months into the future. And if he broke her expectations and did something else, she would just make a new list. This one would probably go _years_.

"No."

Briseis paused and looked at him over the top of her list. She had been a Slytherin, and Harry suspected she did intimidating better as his assistant than she ever had as a student. But Harry didn't have to _feel _intimidated. He rubbed his knuckles over Persephone's breast feathers instead. Persephone, on the perch next to his chair, reached out with one red foot and repositioned his hand without ever lifting her head out of the feathers of her back.

Harry waited for some feeling to return to his fingers before he attempted to say anything else. "The _Prophet _wouldn't tell the truth about me no matter what bribes I promised them. And since they'll just print nonsense one way or the other, I might as well choose the option that gives me less work."

Briseis shuffled her papers for a moment, as though considering the validity of his argument, then said, "I wasn't thinking that you should bribe them to tell the truth."

"I don't think I can persuade them, either," Harry said dryly.

"Not _that_." Briseis looked horrified enough that Harry snickered in spite of himself. "I was thinking of threatening them."

And then there were the times she still managed to surprise him. Harry bit one knuckle and considered her. "They wouldn't print _that_? And make me look still worse?"

Briseis reached down and picked something up off the little wheeled table she had started taking with her everywhere. "I don't think anything can make you look worse than this," she said, turning it around.

The picture showed him standing in the middle of a burned ring of ground, accepting the oaths of some wizards who knelt at his feet. At his side was a black mass, not really distinguishable from grass in the photograph, and a leash of fire led from his wrist to Persephone, who was picking bits off the black mass. The headline screamed: _**DARK LORD HARRY POTTER LETS HIS BLACK PHOENIX EAT CORPSES!**_

Harry rolled his eyes. "That was _at least_ a week ago."

"You need something to replace this." Briseis lowered the newspaper and leaned forwards intently. "Something that can create a new image of you in their minds, something else to gaze at and react to."

Harry turned around again to rub Persephone's breast feathers. They were purest black on top, shading towards midnight blue as they narrowed, and he found them fascinating to touch. Persephone was faint and cold, not at all like Fawkes. "I don't think anything can replace it," he said over his shoulder. "I knew what I was doing when I let Persephone eat Yaxley. Yes, it's disgusting. But it also convinces them as nothing else could."

"Convinces them." Briseis turned that into ice and breathed it back at him.

Too bad for her that Harry was already touching something colder. "Convinces them that I'm a Dark Lord. That I meant what I said about using Dark magic to defend myself. Yaxley's death should have done that, but since it was technically a duel, there are some people who wouldn't think I was frightening."

Briseis laid down her papers, moving with a care that Harry thought meant she was about to crack. Not with laughter, he hoped. "You _want _to become frightening?"

Harry nodded and finally lowered his hand when Persephone made the little grumbling noise in the back of her throat that meant she would try to take off a finger next second. "Yes. It's the only thing that's left to me, the only way I might have some peace. I can't stop them from printing lies about me. I can't stop them from fearing me, or always thinking I might attack. Even when I made an oath not to take over Hogsmeade and to honor those who wanted to come to my court, some of them refused to believe me."

Briseis picked up a quill and snapped it in two.

Harry picked up the pace. "The _only_ way I can stop some of my enemies from attacking me, and forcing me to use more magic and kill more people, is to frighten them so badly that they won't want to. Oh, there'll still be some people who want to be heroes coming after me, but at least the Ministry should be warier. They haven't sent anyone after me since Yaxley, you'll notice."

Briseis's frown deepened. "We have no proof that that was the Ministry."

"Ron checked for me," Harry said. "He still has a contact or two who will look into the Ministry files for him. Yaxley escaped from the Battle of Hogwarts, but he was one of the first Death Eaters arrested after that. He's been in Azkaban for years. They don't have Dementors on the prison anymore, that's true, but I'm sure the only way he could have escaped is with Ministry help and cooperation. And they must have thought it was a justified chance to take. If he destroyed me, that was a bonus. If he didn't, his death wouldn't cost them much.'"

"But it did." Briseis's voice was so soft, Harry had trouble hearing her.

"What do you mean? I still only destroyed Yaxley." Harry looked out the window, wondering if Ministry people had come to the castle and she hadn't told him.

But no, of course not. He was bonded with the castle, and Hogwarts would have told him the instant there was an intrusion like that. Harry stroked his hand down the side of his desk, and was rewarded with a little purr and wriggle that made Persephone tuck her head more tightly into her feathers. Harry was just glad that, if his black phoenix did get jealous of Hogwarts, there was little she could do to harm it. Harry and the school were too closely conjoined.

"I mean," Briseis said, drawing his attention again, "that it cost the Ministry because they pushed you into a spectacular defiance. You gave them a _show_. You said that yourself when you told me about how you let Persephone eat his body."

Harry blinked. "Right. But that was a show for the people around me. The Ministry is so stubborn that they aren't going to be convinced by it, just like they aren't convinced by anything else I do."

"Your audience spreading the word." Briseis gave him a small smile. "The conviction in their voices is affecting others." She gestured to another stack of paper she'd carried in, and which Harry had asked her to set down without making him look at it. The letters.

"People are writing me letters about—what? The duel? Persephone?" Harry stared at them.

"Stop acting stupid," Briseis said crisply. "They're writing about what they saw. A Dark Lord who proclaimed himself in fire and light, created a phoenix out of _nothing_, and then promised that he would never take over Hogsmeade and received some oaths." The knowing look she shot him told Harry she probably suspected a disguised Draco had been one of those people, but until she said it aloud, he wouldn't confirm her suspicions one way or another. "A show is more powerful for some people than anything else. Politics, debate, arguments, newspaper articles, photos." She pointed her chin at the photograph in the _Prophet _again. "Although you have that, too."

Harry blinked and smoothed his hand down his face. Sure, he'd thought about symbolic things, when he created Persephone and allowed her to eat, but he'd thought that would affect the people there, primarily, and maybe the Ministry. Only later had he realized that it was useless to think of affecting the Ministry, so his only audience was the few people there and those they managed to convince.

"They told lots of people?" he muttered. "And those lots of people found it persuasive?"

Briseis solemnly nodded. "And they _like _the idea. They're fascinated with it. A black phoenix. A Dark Lord who holds himself in limits. The wizard who could survive the curse Yaxley was carrying." She smiled at Harry. "They found you fascinating when you survived the Killing Curse, after all. Why is this any different?"

"I don't know," Harry admitted, after thinking about it for a bit. "I suppose I just didn't expect those people to be _interested _enough to propagate it everywhere. I've tried for so long to counter the Ministry, and nothing worked, that I decided this wouldn't work, either."

"You've never done anything as radiant as before," Briseis said, in a voice that made Harry look at her sharply.

She gazed back at him steadily, but with her hands motionless on the stack of papers, and her lips slightly parted. Harry groaned and leaned back in his chair, ignoring the way Persephone shifted. As long as his hand wasn't near her, she couldn't tear it apart with either beak or claws. "You believe it, too, don't you?"

"Hard not to believe it with the evidence right there." Briseis tilted her head at the perch. Persephone pulled her head up, regarded Briseis, and seemed to approve of her, since she went back to sleep.

"But you haven't been a fan before," Harry muttered. "You found me unobjectionable enough to work for, and that's all. I need you to still be as objective as you can, not someone who wants to kneel at my feet."

"Someone usually kneels before her Lord," Briseis said quietly. "It doesn't mean that she can't still offer advice and expect her Lord to listen to her." She hesitated, then added, "I did a moment ago, in fact. You've started something this time—something that didn't start when you announced that you were becoming a Dark Lord, or when you tried to fight back against the Ministry. You're right, they won't learn. But they _will _listen to their people, and you should try an interview."

"So this is the beginning," Harry said, taking a deep breath, and thinking back to that moment in the collapsed dueling circle when he had thought that. He had _hoped _it might be the beginning of a change, sure. But he had decided that was foolish. Nothing had changed when he punished Fifernum or Rosier.

_Because those weren't public enough._

True, Harry decided slowly. His punishment of Fifernum had been private, and Harry doubted she had told anyone about it. Rosier's punishment had happened in front of the Wizengamot, but they had every reason not to spread it around. No use telling the population of wizarding Britain that a Dark Lord had made one of their members almost have an orgasm in front of the rest of the members.

But this was different. His pessimism had been greater than his optimism, for once.

Then Harry had to grin. _But just as wrong._

He looked up at Briseis and shook his head. "It's a good thing you're still here. Otherwise, I might have kept going like there was no big defining moment, and that would be wrong, wouldn't it?"

"It would." Briseis clapped an arm over her stomach and bowed. "And that means that you're more prepared to accept the other news I bring you."

"What news?" But Harry took the letter she held out to him in answer. If she thought he should see something instead of having her tell him about it, then he should.

The letter was smooth and plain, but the hand on it clumsy, and it had no seal. Harry opened it, wondering who would send him one like this. His friends' handwriting would be recognizable, and most of the people in Hogsmeade who had sworn to him were living in the castle now. The Ministry would have gone with a seal and obviously expensive paper, meant to intimidate.

_Greetings to Dark Lord Harry Potter._

_The centaurs of the Forbidden Forest wish for the safety and protection of his court, in exchange for which they will tell him the will of the stars._

Harry stared at it, then looked for the signature, blinking when he realized there wasn't one. Well, why would there be? The letter itself had already told him who it was from.

He looked up at Briseis. "You knew that the centaurs wanted to swear allegiance to me?"

"It was a centaur who delivered it, this morning." Briseis was smiling at him with a look that made her seem serene, but Harry could see the way her hands clenched in front of her, as if she was having to keep herself from fighting or bolting. "What else can it be but a vow? Or a bargain, perhaps. The centaurs haven't been in touch with the Ministry since the end of the war. They can't believe that one Dark Lord more or less in Hogwarts would make a difference to them, unless they decided he was someone it would be good to seek protection from."

Harry nodded slowly. He hadn't made a vow that he would protect the creatures of the Forbidden Forest, but then again, he hadn't thought he would need to. The magical creatures had separated themselves further and further from humans since the end of the war. With peace won, they just wanted their homes back, which Harry could understand. He would have liked to sink into an obscure life of peace himself.

Persephone made a harsh cackling sound from her perch. Harry stared at her suspiciously. He was never sure how much of his thoughts she could really sense.

"My Lord?"

Harry turned back to Briseis. "I'm going to accept the offer," he said. "The Forbidden Forest is right next to Hogwarts, anyway, and it won't take much to extend my wards over it. And the centaurs _should _be left alone."

Briseis smiled. "Good. I suspect they might be bad enemies." She chuckled as she took the letter back, and Harry thought she was laughing at their offer to let him know the will of the stars until she said, "And learning about this will push the conflict with the Ministry forwards further."

"You're going to enjoy this war too much," Harry muttered, and nudged Persephone in the breast. She lifted her head and looked at him.

Harry still hesitated when he met her eyes. He knew how he had created her—pulling and pushing on both his own magical core and the spell that Yaxley had worn, the spell that had almost killed him—and then clapping the whole magical cycle together and outside him, the Darkness he couldn't contain embodied in the shape of a phoenix. But he didn't know yet what it _meant_ that she was made that way. He didn't know how much control he had over her.

Since the day, a week ago as Briseis had reminded him, that he'd created her, he had kept her with him. Persephone didn't seem to mind, as long as he took her outside at least once a day so that she could hunt raw meat, or fed her bleeding tidbits from his plate, and petted her sometimes, and let her alone when she wanted to be.

But Harry knew he would have to test his control over her sooner or later, and he thought this was the best way.

"Go as an emissary to the centaurs," he told her. "Tell them that I'll meet them near the lake tomorrow, at noon." A magical creature sent to magical creatures would give them a good impression of them, he hoped. And Persephone had no reason to want to hurt _them, _not when they weren't his enemies.

Persephone opened her beak in what could have been a mocking little hiss or a yawn, and leaped into the air. Her wings hardly seemed to beat; instead, shadows flooded out of them and lifted her as if she was borne on them. Then she was gone out the window. Harry craned his neck and watched her swooping and circling towards the Forbidden Forest.

"That's a good idea," Briseis said.

Harry turned around. "What is?" If Briseis had somehow divined his thoughts and decided that Persephone was a good ambassador for the same reasons that he had, Harry was even more impressed with her than he had been.

"Having the meeting by the lake," Briseis said. "That way, you can meet with two delegations at once."

Harry stared at her. "Delegations?"

Briseis picked up what Harry would have mistaken for a vial of a potion if he hadn't known that nothing so simple was going to intrude into his complicated life. "Did I mention that the merfolk also sent a message?"

Harry let his head drop forwards into his hands. So now _this _was happening, and who knew how big his court would grow before he was done?

_I wonder what Draco is doing right now. And if he'd be able to get away sometime in the next day and listen to me complain._


	2. Starstruck

Thank you for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two—Starstruck_

"Candidate Malfoy! Over here! Over here!"

Draco turned around with a patient smile. He was leaving a debate on magical creature rights between him and another candidate, Abigail Mason, that he suspected she had orchestrated so she could depart the election gracefully. She knew she wouldn't win, but she still wanted to make her (paranoid) points about the Ministry needing an expanded Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures because the magical creatures were supposedly mustering secret allies and getting ready to attack the wizarding world.

Draco had won the debate mostly by letting her talk and nodding here and there, making soft noises and clucks of his tongue that had caused her to turn pale. She knew that he was undermining her, but accusing him would only make _the public _think she was paranoid.

He knew a lot of people would want to talk to him, but he hadn't expected the desperate shine in the young reporter's eyes. Draco flickered his eyes down to the locket around her neck, which several of the reporters wore to identify their paper. The symbol was one he didn't recognize, though, a heart pierced with an arrow.

The young woman was still jumping up and down even after he stopped to look at her, her braided brown hair flying behind her and her gasps sounding just a little frenzied. "C-Candidate Malfoy," she gasped. "Julia Browne, f-from the _Heart of the Matter. _Can I have your opinion on the message the centaurs sent this morning?"

Draco kept his sudden tremor from showing on his face. He did make sure that his advisor Rosenthal was standing at his side. She shook her head a little. Draco had to smile. If she hadn't heard about it, then at least he didn't have to feel that he was unacceptably neglecting something important about his job.

"I've been in meetings and debate all this morning, Miss Browne," he said, and smiled at the reporter. "I haven't heard about this message. Do you have a copy of it?"

Browne seemed to swell from her small stature to enormous size. She pulled a crinkled parchment out of her pocket and handed it over.

Draco scanned it quickly. Then he went back and read the whole thing, because it was much shorter than he had expected.

_The centaurs of the Forbidden Forest seek the protection of Dark Lord Harry Potter. As of tomorrow, we expect our lands to be under his shielding magic. _Humans keep out.

The last words were underlined.

Draco handed the message back to Browne and kept down the bubble of laughter that was rising up in him, rather the way Browne had jumped up and down in front of him a second ago.

Then he decided that this was a good political move for different reasons, and laughed aloud.

Browne stared at him, her nostrils flaring. She must not have been a reporter for long, Draco thought tolerantly. Otherwise, she would have been quicker to grab her quill and parchment than she was now, poised to take down any words he uttered.

"Good luck to them," Draco said, gravely and calmly and wholly ignoring the way that Rosenthal was breathing down the back of his neck. She could do that all she wanted. No one except her and Harry knew that Draco had sworn an oath to Harry, just as no one except the Wizengamot knew that Rosenthal was under Harry's protection against Rosier's blackmail. "As you can see from the debate today, someone needs to intervene for the centaurs. There are those—" he didn't glance in the direction of Mason, but he knew everyone else would understand who he meant "—who think that magical creatures deserve even more restrictions and laws conspiring against them than there are in the first place."

Rosenthal nudged his ribs with her elbow, probably for his use of the word "conspiring." Draco serenely ignored her. She had done it under cover of their robes, so no one could see. He leaned forwards and fixed Browne with a smile. "I see magical creatures as groups we need to negotiate with. They have powers and politics of their own. We don't refuse to receive ambassadors from other Ministries just because they have policies we don't agree with in their own countries. How ridiculous not to receive magical creatures who live on our own soil."

Rosenthal had nearly tapped him with her elbow again, Draco knew by the feeling against his side, but she hesitated and slowly pulled her arm back. Draco didn't turn his head to beam at her. He didn't need to. His words had obviously got into her head and were bubbling there like a newborn potion.

Browne was scribbling down what he had said, gasping again and glancing up at him with a flush on her cheeks that made Draco smile for a different reason. "Thank you, _thank you_," she whispered. She had a coup and she knew it, Draco thought. The other reporters had heard him, too, but they'd been further away and would have to ask for clarification. Browne would be able to say that he'd talked directly to _her_. "That's the best response ever!"

Draco bit his lip. She was young, but she didn't deserve to have her dignity torn to shreds. "You're welcome."

Browne Apparated on the spot, and the other reporters pressed in, trying to get their share of his comments. Draco turned to answer, but Rosenthal gripped his shoulder and leaned near to whisper into his ear first.

"You're sure about this?"

Draco glanced back at her for a fleeting second. "How likely do you think it is that Potter would keep his protection from them?"

Rosenthal's hand fell open, and she let him go. Draco nodded as he turned around to face the onslaught of camera flashes and questions. She saw sense well, when she let herself. Draco was acknowledging the inevitable, and wrongfooting other candidates, like Minister Tillipop, who would give a spluttering response and end up on the wrong side of Harry.

_Again._

_The future is with my Lord._

Draco smiled more widely and genuinely than he had in months, at least in public, and the cameras twinkled. Draco imagined what the sight of his smile above the headline would do to Tillipop, and paused to add more brightness.

* * *

"Mars is propitious."

Harry smiled politely, and said nothing. He had decided before this meeting that he wouldn't ask the meaning of anything the centaurs said. He wouldn't understand it anyway, and they probably wouldn't want to explain. That was the point of their offer, as he understood it. They would tell him what the stars said about the future in terms he could understand.

But the bargain hadn't started yet.

Two centaurs stood waiting for Harry and Briseis at the edge of the lake. Neither one was Firenze, which Harry had been expecting. One was brown all over, from the shaggy hair that dropped down to his shoulders to his strong, gleaming flanks and the tail that swished behind him. The other had a bay coat, black tail, and streaks of white on his legs, but the sternest face Harry had seen since Professor McGonagall and a shock of brilliant blond hair. He was the one who'd spoken.

Either of them might do anything at a moment's notice, Harry had decided. He stroked Persephone, who was currently sitting on his shoulder and watching the centaurs as she might a delicious meal. She had delivered the message, he tried to tell her with his gentle hand on her back, and apparently in such a way that the centaurs understood it, by forming pictures in her flame. That should be enough to keep her from eating them.

Persephone thoughtfully dug in her claws until she was on the verge of drawing blood. Harry dropped his hand away from her back, and her hold eased.

"Welcome," Harry said, since that was a word it wasn't hard to understand. "You came to set up the bargain you referred to?"

"Bargain," said the blond centaur, and looked at the brown one as though he assumed he would have an answer.

"Bargain," echoed the brown one, and faced Harry. "I am Enzian. This is Hold." He fell silent and watched Harry, his tail moving fast enough that the outer strands curled around his hooves.

"Er," Harry said, and coughed a little. "I'm Harry. This is Persephone. This is Briseis." He indicated his adviser, standing back and watching the situation with a stack of paper in her hands. Harry didn't think they would need it for the meeting with either the merfolk or the centaurs, but Briseis needed her own form of comfort.

Enzian nodded, and once again stood still.

Harry decided it was up to him to take the plunge. "You want my protection in exchange for telling me the will of the stars," he said.

"Venus is especially bright this month," Hold said.

Persephone leaned forwards and snapped her beak, hard enough to sound like the popping of someone's jaw.

The centaurs looked at her, neither one seeming afraid. Hold even nodded to her, as though the clack of her beak had been a learned commentary on his invocation of Venus. Harry reached up and gripped one of her feet. He didn't think he could do much if Persephone did break free, but it ought to delay her for a few moments, and give the centaurs a chance to get under the branches of the Forest, where she couldn't fly as well.

_If they were smart enough to run. _Given the way they still stood there staring at him, Harry couldn't be sure.

"You said that you would reveal to me the will of the stars if I gave you my protection," Harry said at last, going for the only answer that might prompt them to respond. "What is the will of Venus?"

Enzian nudged his way forwards a little, as if he wanted to be standing right in front of Harry when he gave him important information. His eyes were wide and earnest. "Venus is a planet, and not a star," he said gently.

Harry didn't clap his hand to his face because the centaurs might comment on seeing starlight leaking through his fingers. Besides, doing that would mean letting go of Persephone, who was vibrating a little with the force of her suppressed shrieks. Harry wondered how her mission to the centaurs had gone so well. Perhaps because she'd spoken, all alone, and the centaurs hadn't confined her or interrupted.

"The will of the stars," said Hold, slowly, and with a depth to his voice that made Harry look up hopefully. Maybe they would get to statements that he could understand at last. "The rising stars show a new influence rising over Britain. It must be you." He peered intently at Harry, and his tail was swishing hard enough now to curl around his back hooves. "There is no other candidate that fits."

"Because no other candidate is rising right now?" Harry asked. He had thought of the Ministry election right away, but the centaurs didn't always care about human politics, and maybe the stars wouldn't reflect them.

On the other hand, they had sometimes said things about the war with Voldemort. And it was a little arrogant to think that _he _was important enough to have a set of star-reflections all his own, but the election wasn't.

"Because of your connection with Mars." Hold moved forwards a step and bent down to look into Harry's face. For some reason, that made Persephone stop shrieking to herself. Harry cautiously let her go. She didn't take off to tear out Hold's eyes, but turned to preening her feathers instead. Harry swallowed. At least _one _thing was going right.

The centaur's glinting, deep brown eyes had a sheen that Harry thought could be mesmerizing if he looked into it for long enough. He contented himself with touching Persephone's tail once and glancing away.

"Because of your connection with war," Hold whispered. "You can bring war back, and you can calm it. You can tame it, and you can make it wild. It all depends on what you do, and whether you pay heed to the stars or only the beings that surround you on earth."

Harry swallowed. "So you _are _saying that you'll be advisers of a sort, in return for my promise to protect the Forest?"

"Mars is not a star," said Enzian, in the same exact chiding tone which he had used to pronounce that Venus wasn't one.

Harry turned around. Maybe he should act like Persephone and use actions instead of words to communicate. He reached down and into his soul, stirring the magic around until he knew what he wanted to do. Bonding with the Forest the way he had bonded with Hogwarts wasn't on the agenda. Protecting it was, and showing the centaurs he could do a good job of that would help with the rest of the negotiations, he thought.

He stabbed one hand forwards, and the magic rose from his fingers and poured in a glittering, rainbow-like cascade over the Forest. At the same moment, Persephone opened her mouth and began to sing.

The song startled Harry so much that he nearly stopped his pouring of magic. But then he shook his head and kept moving his hand back and forth. The magic settled on the leaves and trunks of the Forest, blazing.

And then it turned green.

The centaurs turned to watch as the trees shimmered emerald and black, the magic slithering down to their roots and up to their branches. Harry clamped his hands shut and ended the flow of power a moment later. He had done what he could, and now it remained to be seen if the magic would do what he wanted.

The color of the light seemed to say that, so far, it was. The trees flushed up and down, all over, with the dazzling shine of it. Harry closed his eyes and could feel the power traveling through the soil, loosening it and then tightening it around the roots of the trees, able to let them resist efforts to dig them up or burn them now.

And then the branches trembled, and a new cascade of light rose over the Forest, this time coming from the trees themselves. It was there for a moment only, a leaping fountain, and then it vanished. Harry breathed out. He had hoped that would happen, too, but he hadn't been sure until he actually saw it.

"What was _that_?" For once, Enzian seemed startled enough to respond like a normal—person, Harry supposed. He could get used to thinking of the centaurs as people, and not just magical creatures.

Harry reached up and stroked Persephone's feathers again. He shouldn't have doubted her, he thought. She was magnificent, and having her here seemed to strengthen his magic. "It's the power that will protect you," he said. "Distributing itself to every leaf and creature in the Forest, as fast as it could."

"How will it protect us?" Hold leaned down to look into Harry's face again. Although Harry had never heard of any centaur having the ability to detect lies, he was sure that was what was happening now, and that Hold would sense it in seconds if he tried to deceive them.

Just as well, then, that Harry had no such intention. He met Hold's eyes mildly and shook his head a little. "It'll defend you because it makes it clear that the Forest is mine to other wizards who come into it," he said. "Wizards who aren't a part of my court, at least. They'll hear voices whispering my name everywhere they go. They'll see shadows that vanish when they turn around, but all those shadows will wear my eyes. The longer they stay in there, the closer the shadows will come, and the more power they'll have. They'll destroy them if they linger. That, I promise."

Enzian fell back a step as Hold loomed closer still. "Then you have _branded _the Forest. With your name, your mark."

Harry blinked a moment, wondering why that particular term caused the centaur such anger, and then glanced at his horse-like flanks. Yes, well, he could see why the idea of branding would be sensitive. "No," he said. "I've defended it. It's more like setting a troop of loyal—phoenixes inside the Forest and letting them attack intruders who aren't supposed to be there." He had almost said "dogs," but he didn't think centaurs would appreciate references to dogs, either. From what Harry had read, wizards had sometimes used hounds to hunt them.

Persephone bit his ear, hard. Harry hissed as blood dribbled down on his shoulder, but he didn't do anything to her. He still didn't really understand the limits of his relationship with her, and he had endured worse pain to make her.

The centaurs exchanged glances again, and then Enzian said to him, "What if they come in and only stay a short time, but still hurt us? What good will your shadow-phoenixes and watching eyes do then?"

Harry smiled pleasantly at him. "The shadows are the passive warning system. The magic that ran down the trees' roots is the active one. It'll attack the minute it feels the pain of a creature in the Forest that comes from a wizard's wand."

"Even wizards of your court?"

Harry shook his head, inwardly marveling how easy it was to talk to centaurs once they thought he was threatening them. "No. The ones of my court will have a special _brand _of their own to render their wands free of it. But if they attack somebody for anything other than self-defense, then the watching eyes will see it, and those defenses will come into play, too. I don't intend to let anyone get away with betraying me."

The centaurs scraped their left forehooves in the ground, simultaneously. Harry stood there and let them think about that, both the fact that he had done something for them to guard the Forest even though they hadn't kept up their side of the bargain yet—

And what would happen to them if they tried to betray him.

Abruptly, Enzian slid to one knee, a quick bow that ended almost immediately with him on his feet again. "That is enough for me," he said. "You are a child of Mars indeed, and I will advise you."

Hold looked at both of them with a frown, and said, "I will take the message to the others." And he turned and sped back into the Forest.

Harry took a deep breath. Well, that had gone all right, then. He scrubbed absently at his ear, and the blood still dripping from it.

"My lord." Briseis handed him the vial of clear lake-water, which contained the merfolk's singing message.

Harry sighed. _Yes, really, a Dark Lord's work is never done._ He turned to face the lake. He hoped that he was done with demonstrating powerful magic for the day; it exhausted him.

Persephone fluffed her tail out and trilled.

Harry glared sideways at her out of the corner of his eye. _Yes, you bloody phoenix, I know. _You _love it. Vain, greedy creature._

Persephone looked at him smugly, and lifted her tail to perform an even less pleasant operation down his back.


	3. Stolen Moments

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Three—Stolen Moments_

Draco glanced over his shoulder, and then decided that wasn't enough and cast a spell that would tell him whether Rosenthal was still in the house. He sighed when the answer came back to him, like an echo from empty rooms. No, she had gone home.

And _he _was going to Harry. He had been away from him long enough. Hell, he'd hardly got to see him in the week since Harry had raised the black phoenix and broken free from that dueling circle that was meant to kill him.

Draco smiled slightly as he cast in the Floo powder and called out, "Harry Potter's office!" He had something to tell Harry that might cheer him up, or at least make him rub his hands together. The Ministry had refused to comment officially on the way Harry had become a Dark Lord—they had left that to the _Daily Prophet _and other members of the public who wanted to be hysterical—but Draco had allies who worked inside, and who would pass on word of what was happening there.

Harry still wasn't a Dark Lord in the sense that his father would mean the words if he spoke them, but Draco thought he would enjoy the news anyway.

"Draco?" Harry called, an instant after Draco stepped into the office. "I thought that was you. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm just making dinner."

Draco had glanced around the office, noting the addition of a few chairs and a bigger, flatter hearth in front of the fireplace, but he turned around gaping when he heard _that_. He couldn't help himself. "_What_?" he asked.

"I said, I was making dinner." Harry glanced up from what looked like a brazier in the corner of the room. "Why?"

"You've got _house-elves _to do that for you," Draco muttered, dropping into the chair that was usually marked as his, one with a curved back and upholstered arms that made comfortable rests. Sometimes he thought that it wasn't their past stances on blood politics or their upbringing that really separated him and Harry, but little things like this. Harry had the power and the resources to command a bunch of people to do things for him. That he would prefer to do a mundane chore like cooking dinner for himself…

Well, Draco could think of reasons, but he sincerely doubted they were Harry's. "Are you afraid of poison?" he asked.

Harry gaped at him for a second, then snorted hard enough to make little bits of snot fly out of his nose. Draco winced primly. "What? Of course not. I think Hogwarts would tell me if anyone even brought dangerous ingredients into the school, let alone poison. It let me know when some of the students were trying to sneak plants out of the Herbology greenhouses."

Draco sighed. "Then why make dinner for yourself?" he asked, deciding he might as _well _ask. He didn't understand, but Harry wouldn't mind trying to help him comprehend it. "The house-elves would make it faster and better, and Hogwarts would protect you. You can eat in both comfort and safety."

Harry turned around. He had a pan in his hand—Draco didn't know the word for the kind it was, and he was proud of that and had no intention of changing it—and was swirling the contents back and forth by a long handle. "But I want to do it this way," he said. "I like it."

Draco cocked his head. "All right. That doesn't answer my original question, though. Why make it for yourself, besides the fact that you like it?"

Harry's jaw set. "That I like it is enough reason."

Draco studied him closely. He wondered if someone had been annoying him, from the way Harry gave a little stamp of his foot a second later, and the magic blew around his head into wavering, transparent wings before it calmed down and Harry turned back to the fire. That might explain why he was doing a mundane chore, to calm down.

"Just tell me." Draco made his voice as soft as he could, and reached out a hand. He was too far away from Harry to touch him, even with the cooperation of Hogwarts, but Harry saw the gesture from the corner of his eye, and sighed and relaxed the way Draco had hoped he would.

"I got this letter today," Harry said, and a crumpled envelope floated towards Draco. Draco glanced once at Harry, and Harry shook his head. "Oh, no. It didn't have curses or anything on it. It's the content." He shut his eyes and drew in a long breath.

Draco picked it up. The handwriting looked vaguely familiar, but not until he read it did he understand.

_Dear Dark Lord Harry Potter, _

_As requested by you, I am reporting the existence of an abused wizarding child. She is Muggleborn, ten years old. Registered in the Ministry's archives, but she has not yet been visited by anyone to tell her the wizarding world is real. She lives in Essex…_

There was a Muggle address that meant nothing to Draco. Muggles had the strangest ways of naming things, as far as he was concerned. And imagine having to rely on _humans _who had to decipher their handwriting for delivery of letters, instead of owls. He skipped down to the next part that made sense.

_My observation indicates that her abuse is verbal and emotional, with perhaps an occasional foray into physicality. Her name is Anne Enders. A photograph is included._

_As requested by you, _

_Fifernum._

Draco sighed out. That was Blaise's mother, working in the Ministry under an assumed identity, who had collected and sent out photographs of Harry's abuse. Part of her punishment had been to let Harry know instantly if she found out that another wizarding child was being abused. Draco laid the letter aside and studied Harry's tense back. He no longer wondered at the mood he was in, only that it wasn't worse.

"Did you already do something?" he asked quietly.

Harry tilted his head in a slashing motion. "Briseis kept me from going right away. She was afraid that I would be angry enough to kill her parents. And I might have been. We sent Hagrid on a thestral instead. He has Anne in a safe place tonight, and he'll bring her to Hogwarts tomorrow. If anyone can make her feel at home, he's the one."

Draco arched his eyebrows, but decided it was unlikely a Muggleborn would have the same kind of fear of giants that a pure-blood child would have. "And her parents?"

"_I will deal with them_."

The voice made several of the stones near Draco suddenly crack and craze as if with frost. Draco hissed between his teeth and rubbed at the gooseflesh that had appeared on his arms in the wake of that intense wave of magic.

"Sorry," Harry muttered, turning to stare at him. "Shit. Sorry," he repeated, and went back to shaking his pan.

"It's all right," Draco said, pitching his voice to soothe. He knew that Harry's anger was already gone; otherwise, the room would have been cold, still. "I know you didn't mean to upset me, and it's understandable that you would be angry at the thought of another child being hurt the way you were hurt."

"I don't know if her parents abused her because she has magic," Harry whispered, staring into the fire. "I don't know if it was anything like what I went through, or if it was worse. I sent Hagrid because I kept dreaming about someone coming to rescue me, my parents or someone who would tell me that I was a secret prince or _anyone. _And Hagrid is fierce, but he would put Anne first. He would want to take care of her instead of frightening her parents."

"You would have, too."

Harry turned around, and Draco caught a glimpse of the savagery on his face that made his own tongue dry up. At almost the same moment, Persephone dropped from the ceiling onto his shoulder and sang a light trilling note, rubbing her beak against Harry's face.

"That's the friendliest I've ever seen your phoenix," Draco said, deciding that they needed to talk about something else to dissipate some of the tension in the air.

Harry laughed dryly and lifted one hand to touch the middle of Persephone's back. She ducked her head, though, and after a hesitation that Draco could feel in his bones, Harry reached up to stroke one finger against her neck instead. "She's acting this way at the moment because I'm thinking about destroying something," he muttered. "Or some_one_. She wants to encourage me."

Persephone picked up her head and gave another little trill. She was close to Harry's face, but all she did was, very gently, take one of his eyelashes between the ends of her beak and start nibbling. Harry caught his breath, but did nothing else, and a second later, she released his eyelash and crooned at him, looking towards the window.

"She really wants you to go and hurt them, doesn't she?" Draco asked quietly. "She's not trying to comfort you because you're hurting?"

"Anne's the one who's hurting," Harry said automatically. Persephone jerked her head up and gave a little hiss like a snake, and Harry rolled his eyes and turned back to whatever he was cooking. "No, she can sense that I'm on the brink of losing control, and she's trying to make me lose it."

Draco stared at the bird again. She was lovely, the firelight catching her feathers that at first seemed plain black and starting all sorts of other colors to life: blue, green, violet, coruscating indigo. "I didn't realize having her was so hard on you," he murmured.

Harry started to shrug, and then seemed to remember he had a temperamental black phoenix on his shoulder and didn't. "I would rather have her than not have her, considering what could have happened when she came into being," he said. "But she's the dark and the Dark part of me externalized, Draco. What she wants isn't the best guide for my conscience."

Draco sat back and studied Harry. Harry gave a final shake to whatever was in the pan and opened the lid, laying it down. "You want some?" he added over his shoulder, picking up a plate that lay off to the side and starting to pile food on it.

"Yes," Draco said. He didn't know what it was, and it might be more of the thick Muggle sludge Harry had already tried to feed him a couple of times before, and which Draco had mouthed his way through. But he didn't need to eat it, just to pretend.

And right now, he had the feeling Harry needed someone to accept him. _All _of him, or as much as they were willing to take.

Harry smiled at him over his shoulder and began taking out the thick pieces of toast inside the pan with a long fork, examining them critically for a second before he placed them on a plate and sent the plate skimming over to Draco via a controlled air current. Draco studied the toast cautiously before he took a bite. It looked thick, and as though it had the gleam of melted butter on it, but no worse than that.

Then he took a bite, and almost choked. _Sweet. _There was butter soaked into the toast, but also sugar, and something deeper and sweeter that might have been a spice of some kind. Draco groped with his hand for a cup of water, and Harry laughed and handed him one as he came over to settle into the chair opposite Draco.

"Sorry," he said. "That was Dudley's favorite, and I like to make it because I never got to have it when I was a kid. I always forget how it'll strike someone who didn't grow up with it, though."

Draco glanced at him sideways, wondering if he had meant to reveal that bit of information about never getting to have something his cousin ate constantly, but Harry was too busy trying to coax Persephone to accept a tidbit of toast to notice his look. Persephone considered it with her head on one side. Then she lifted it and flew regally away from Harry's shoulder, landing on the perch that sat beside his desk. When she began to vigorously clean her breast feathers, Draco snickered.

Persephone fixed him with a freezing look, but Draco wasn't concerned. She wasn't _his _phoenix. Besides, she must know that he would encourage some of Harry's tendencies that she probably wanted urged along.

And, too, Harry would never forgive her if she attacked Draco.

Feeling a bit calmer than he had when he first came into the office, Draco turned back to Harry. "It seems so long since I've seen you," he murmured.

Harry looked up at him and smiled. "Well, it isn't so long since you swore me that vow." He took a few hard bites of toast, crunching them between his teeth as if they had personally offended him, and then laid the plate aside. "I meant to ask you," he said softly, leaning forwards, while the fire highlighted his face and made Draco want to touch him. "Why _did _you swear it?"

"Because I had the chance, and the chance might never come again," Draco answered easily. Of all the questions that Harry could have asked him, that one startled him a little. "There I was, and I was disguised, and no one except Rosenthal knew. It was a gesture that wouldn't hurt my campaign the way swearing under my own name and face would."

"Yeah, but," Harry said, and fell silent. Across the room, Persephone looked at him, but a second later turned her back. Draco couldn't read much from that gesture.

Draco reached out to take Harry's hand. "What?" he added, when Harry looked at him with a painful, yearning uncertainty that made Draco's heart throb a little. "Tell me."

Harry's hand closed around his hard enough to make Draco's wrist ache. "I want you to be free," Harry whispered. "I want the people around me to be able to do what they want. I mean, within reason. I would still turn against someone who said they served me but wanted to shut the school down. But what does it mean that _you _decided that you would rather swear to me than not? Why would you want anyone else to control your life? I thought part of the reason you wanted to become Minister was to have the control that Voldemort stole from you during the war."

Draco blinked. He had never considered that particular interpretation of his decision, but he supposed it made sense. He wondered if that was one reason his parents hadn't objected to his decision as much as they could have. Lucius could have cut off the money that Draco received from him, or disinherited him. He never had, despite all his complaining.

"I swore to you because I wanted to," Draco said. "I wanted to be under your protection. I want to fight with you. I want to serve you. I understand all the reasons that we have to keep our connection secret for now, and I agree with them," he added hastily, while Harry raised his eyebrows. "I know, I know. It wouldn't look good for either of us."

"It wouldn't look good for _you_," Harry corrected. "They would think you were my pawn. But it could only look good for me to have a skilled and competent lover." He raised Draco's hand to his lips and kissed it.

Draco let his eyelashes flutter for a second, enjoying the surge of magic and power through the kiss, but just for that second. Then he shook his head and firmly put it aside. "You think I'm your pawn because I swore to you?"

"It wasn't as binding a vow as it could have been," Harry said. "But, yes."

"I _want _to be with you," Draco said, and stood to cross the distance between them, leaning against Harry and half-crushing him back into the chair. "I want to stand at your side. I can't do it openly, and maybe I wouldn't know what to do if I could. I _am _still a Slytherin, after all." He made Harry smile, and that was success enough to embolden him to continue. "But that just makes me more determined to have the kind of connection that we _can _have." He ran his hand down Harry's shoulder and tugged a little at his hair. Harry closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the cloth of the chair.

"I want you," Draco said. "For my lover, for my friend, for my ally." He swallowed and spoke the last words, the ones he hadn't said aloud before, because Harry would almost certainly take them the wrong way. "For my Lord."

Harry's eyes opened, and he looked at Draco for a long, still moment. Then he reached up.

Draco reached back and down, dizzy with relief and pleasure. Harry was past the moment when he might have rejected that. Maybe he had been ever since he created Persephone. He knew that he was a Lord now, and he accepted it much more easily than he ever had.

Their lips met, and another desire than just being with Harry and being his sprang to life inside Draco. They had kissed before, they'd touched, but someone or something had always interfered when they might have gone further.

"Lock the door," Draco breathed into Harry's mouth, drawing back enough to say that. "Cast any warding spells that you have to. Just make sure that we're not interrupted, again."

Harry's eyes flared, and he whispered into Draco's neck, "_Yes_," the instant before the shadows around the room deepened, stones grew over the door, and Persephone took flight with a startled squawk. She soared out the window and disappeared.

Draco had an instant to laugh before Harry kissed him again.

And lots of things—like awareness of the outside world—disappeared.


	4. Reclaiming

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Four—Reclaiming_

Drowning.

Draco was drowning.

Harry's skin beneath his hands was warmer than skin should be, gleaming from behind as though it was a transparent film over pearly fire. The magic made Draco's palms tingle constantly as if they were waking up from being trapped under something. The way Harry's hair brushed over Draco's fingers left sparks behind.

Draco bent his head and fastened his mouth at the juncture of Harry's neck and shoulder. Harry hissed under his breath, and for a second his hand flexed in the air as though he didn't know what to do with it.

Then he gripped the back of Draco's neck and wrenched his head up. Draco let him do that, licking his lips. Harry stared, leaning forwards, and a senseless babble of sound came out of his glistening mouth.

Draco ducked his head and let his eyelashes flutter. "I don't speak Parseltongue, remember?" he whispered, and his voice came out even huskier than he had planned on.

Harry tilted him backwards. For a second Draco thought he would fall on the stone floor and tried to brace himself, and then he felt something soft but substantial beneath his back. He relaxed. Of course Harry wouldn't let him fall, and the magic that bonded Harry to Hogwarts and made him lord of this place could create a bed if it wanted to.

The blankets under Draco were soft and furry. When he looked down, he saw they were also black, with streaks of white and silver in the fur here and there. He doubted they were really the skins of animals, more something Harry had conjured for the occasion.

Once Draco saw their color, though, he couldn't help himself. He was a showman; it was the one part of his campaign that Rosenthal seemed to think he needed no help with. Draco spread his legs out, slowly, kicking so that his robes fluttered back a little. Then he tilted his head until he had almost buried his hair in the blankets, and offered his hands and his throat up to Harry. He knew very well what he would look like, all that pale against all that black.

"Don't you want me?" he whispered, when Harry hovered and stared but didn't descend to put his hands and mouth in the places that Draco most wanted them.

And Harry descended on him.

* * *

Harry couldn't believe how _hungry _he was. Yes, he had wanted Draco for a long time now, and it seemed that someone always came along and interrupted him before he could do all the things to Draco that he longed to do. But still, that didn't account for the force that made his blood pound against his ears and his fingers twitch again and again. He felt like a Dreamless Sleep Potions addict that he'd arrested when he was still an Auror. The addict had banged against the bars of his prison and screamed that he needed more of his potion.

And Harry needed more of Draco.

He took his shirt off first, because that was in the way of all the skin on his chest that Harry wanted to touch. He saw faint silvery scars there, and one that looked as though Draco hadn't had it Healed in time. Harry traced his fingers over them, back and forth, and Draco hissed. Harry grinned. _You do so speak Parseltongue._

He might even have teased him about it, except his mouth could be put to better uses. He leaned over and began to suck on Draco's collarbone, making Draco arch and give another kind of hiss, in the most delicious way. His hand flailed out as if he would stop Harry, and Harry caught it and guided it to the side. Then he went right back to sucking as hard as he could, and Draco's body danced and writhed in response, and Harry found that he really liked that.

He was Hogwarts's lord and could do things to make it respond, but being Draco's Lord was…better.

"God, I love you," he mumbled against Draco's skin, against his nipple that made Draco writhe again, against his collarbone that stood out soft and silky beneath his skin, against his leg that he wandered down towards. But to get to his leg, he had to tug off Draco's shoes, and then his trousers, and then his pants, and that _still _left Draco's robes spread around them like another blanket. Harry frowned. He had never noticed how many clothes wizards wore before, almost as if they wanted to make sex difficult.

But when he waved his hand, the clothes tore themselves off with a quickness that startled Draco but didn't hurt him, and folded themselves in the corner. Harry grinned at Draco's expression and bent his head so that he could suck, this time, on the skin behind Draco's knee.

Draco _liked _that. He was so hard that Harry wasn't surprised when Draco turned to the side and began to rub himself against the blankets, but he had to stop that, because making Draco come was only for _him_. He reached out a hand and captured Draco instead.

And once he felt that, he forgot all about going slow.

_Shit, _Harry thought incoherently as he watched the writhing expressions on Draco's face. His jaw had fallen open and he gaped. Then he gasped as Harry stroked him, slow and steady. Harry sped his hand up, and Draco's eyes shut and he began arching his hips mindlessly, without pattern, just trying to get off.

This was all the power that Harry wanted, for now. The rest of the world could go hang.

He banished his own clothes the same way he had Draco's, and checked the locking charms on the door one more time. No way was he letting this be interrupted. He might incinerate the unfortunate person who tried.

Then he climbed into the bed with Draco, and bent down to kiss that gaping mouth. Draco turned his head back towards him, and they collapsed into their kiss.

* * *

Draco didn't know how he was going to _recover _after this. Recovery was something that happened to other people.

People who didn't have Harry Potter getting ready to fuck them.

Draco had wondered if Harry would know what to do. None of the newspaper articles had so much as breathed a hint that he'd ever had a male lover before this, which was a good thing, as Draco would have had to hunt down that lover and obsessively compare himself with him if they had. But he could have learned it since he started thinking about taking Draco to bed, or Draco might have to teach him.

Draco wasn't sure what idea made him hotter, actually.

It turned out that Harry reached to the side and dipped his fingers in a pot of something glistening on a table close to the bed—a table that hadn't been there a moment ago, any more than the bed had been—and when he slid them down and towards Draco's arse, they were convincingly sticky. Draco sucked in a breath and spread his legs further. He kept running into barriers, the humped blankets and the sides of Harry's knees.

It didn't matter. With the way Harry's eyes burned him, Draco didn't know if he _could _display himself enough to answer the hunger in that gaze. Or the hunger that seared through him, and made him arch his hips and wriggle to get closer to Harry, his erection thrusting at him until Harry reached down and circled it with another slick hand.

Draco took in a breath that burned his lungs going down, and thrust. He _glided _through Harry's fingers, and he couldn't tell with what, the oil Harry had fetched or his own body's gleaming liquid.

That shouldn't have made him yearn, either, but it did.

Harry smiled at him, heavy-lidded with desire, and slid his finger into Draco's arse. Draco relaxed. It was hard to do that, most of the time, but most of the time, he didn't have Harry looming over him and the promise of something wonderful as soon as he _did _manage to relax.

Harry took a little whistling breath, and pushed his finger deeper. Draco licked his lips, and arched his body until it felt as if he would fly off the bed. Harry reached out and placed his hand in the center of Draco's chest, stroking, holding him down. He shook his head when Draco pushed up again and whispered, "If you go now…I can't…"

_I've reduced the all-powerful Dark Lord of Hogwarts to stammering._

Draco was fucking _ready _then, and the way that Harry kept probing and pushing at him with that one finger didn't help, just made it worse. He pushed himself back into the bed, and Harry smiled a little. Then Draco pulled himself away, and Harry looked as if he was close to panic.

"No more," Draco said. It was a challenge to convince his throat and tongue to work, but then, they didn't have Harry's mouth right there to kiss, so they would just have to do something else to get what they wanted. "No—more. Stop _teasing _me. Come and fuck me."

Harry gaped at him as though he had never seen Draco before. Well, he hadn't seen _this _one, Draco thought, the one begging Harry to fuck him. Draco hadn't met him before, either, but he rather liked the bloke.

He planted his heels on the bed and wriggled his hips at Harry. Harry's eyes promptly lit, and he almost growled. His slick hands slid up to Draco's hips, and he seemed to have got rid of that stupid hesitancy. He aimed and pointed and pushed, and Draco arched again, although this time he knew he couldn't get away and he had no intention of doing so.

Harry burned inside him, a lot like his breathing did. Draco reached up one groping hand and gripped Harry's arm, holding him in place.

"Too much?" Harry whispered. Or panted, really. Draco snapped his eyes open to see Harry leaning over him, breathing like a dog.

"A lot," Draco said. It was all he could say, because then his throat seemed to squeeze shut on the rest of the words. He closed his eyes and squeezed Harry's arm in turn, murmuring what weren't words but just sounds.

Harry seemed to interpret them correctly, at least, and pushed ahead. Draco felt him pierce further and further inside, and he shuddered, hips banging down on the bed again. His legs followed, at least until Harry seized them and hauled them up on his shoulders. He was bending Draco almost in half.

Draco loved it.

"Now," Harry said, and either his magic had told him that Draco wanted him to move or he just couldn't wait any longer himself. Once again, Draco wasn't sure which would be hotter.

Harry began to rock, so hard that the bed shuddered and sang around them. Then Harry paused for a second, and the bed steadied itself. Draco chuckled, or thought he did. He wasn't sure that the noise made it all the way out of his throat.

Harry bent down, panting. Draco opened his eyes and found Harry leaning on him, chest to chest, approximately. His forehead wouldn't touch Draco's, but it came bloody close. And the tension and the strain flooded Draco as much as the pleasure, and he opened his mouth and extended his tongue.

It couldn't touch Harry's, but not for lack of trying. Harry smiled at him, and it seemed that any question he could have asked, wanted to ask, would try to ask, dissolved into nothingness. Draco leaned his head back on the pillow and nodded gracious permission that came out like desperate permission.

Harry did chuckle—_he _could get full breath to do it, the bastard—and began to thrust. The sheer pleasure of having his Lord inside him filled Draco for a second, and it was good.

Then Harry began to hit his prostate, and it was almost unbelievable.

* * *

Harry watched Draco's eyes shutting despite themselves, his head lolling back. Draco was having a _good _time, Harry thought. He didn't need to worry about that. And he didn't need to worry that he didn't enjoy it himself, either. The pleasure was striking, up from his spine and down his shoulders and around his groin.

He didn't need to worry about anything, in fact, except _continuing _to make sure that Draco had a good time.

Harry half-shut his eyes and threw his back into it. Draco groaned beneath him. The bed did, too. Harry sent a little more magic into the stones, requesting that Hogwarts not let them fall in the middle of having sex. The bed stopped groaning.

Draco started panting as though he was having a heart attack. Harry snapped his eyes open and leaned down to see what was happening.

Draco stared at him, glazed and cross-eyed, and whispered, "Were you—were you using magic? It felt good. Do it _again_." It sounded like it had taken a miracle to for him to get even that much of the words out coherent and whole.

But his wish was Harry's command, and Harry did do it again, running his magic into the blankets on the bed and making them softer. Draco called out sharp and clear at the end of it, his back arching off the blankets and down into contact with them as though he didn't know whether it was a pleasure or a torment.

_Or both._

Harry leaned down and sucked at Draco's throat again. He liked doing that. He liked throwing his back into it. He liked thrusting and watching Draco thrash in response, his mouth open and his tongue dangling down until it almost touched his cheek. Draco gasped and hissed, and Harry picked up the pace. The bed danced beneath them, but still didn't break.

Harry felt a tightening in his balls and his back, and finally realized what was missing, what he hadn't done yet, and what he ought to have done. He reached down and began to stroke Draco's cock, trying to time them, as best as he could, to his own rough thrusts. That way, both of them sort of got stroked at the same time.

Sort of. Harry reckoned that he didn't have to make sense when he was blowing Draco's mind as much as he obviously was.

Draco froze again, and humped the air so hungrily that he nearly slammed Harry in the face, and began to come. Harry hadn't known—

He caught his breath and began to hammer his hips home. Not something he'd planned on, but he hadn't known—

It was so _satisfying _to be inside Draco when he came, to feel the tight squeezing and the pleasure and know that he was the one who had given it to Draco. Who was _still _giving it to Draco. He trembled and urged himself on, and finally collapsed over Draco, leg muscles giving out.

He almost lost track of the moment when he came, pleasure and satisfaction were so mixed together that he couldn't take them apart. He whimpered into the pillow and thrust once more into Draco, who felt limp and relaxed and receptive.

He didn't have much time to lie there, though, because Draco began to kiss his neck. Harry laughed softly and turned his head. "You still have the energy for that?" he mumbled, or something like it, because _he _didn't have the energy to move his mouth around the words. "I didn't do it right."

"You did everything right," Draco said, by his ear. Harry sighed and closed his eyes. His magic was running and dancing through his body, but he didn't want to use it right then. He thought he didn't have control of it, and would probably blast something to smithereens.

"Mind sleeping like this?" he asked. It must have been clear enough, because Draco laughed into his ear.

"No."

And Harry let go, and slipped into the first sleep of pure bliss he'd had since he became a Dark Lord.

* * *

Draco stroked Harry's hair, and shivered a little.

He had come over to tell Harry about politics in the Ministry that his allies had found, and had forgotten it completely when Harry started speaking to him. Maybe that was just as well. His entire body was still tingling pleasantly, and _that _wouldn't have happened if he had kept straight on course.

Draco kissed Harry's head, behind the ear, and rolled over. He was plenty warm, with Harry draped on top of him and the blankets puddled around them like miniature fortress walls. He just needed to ease the angle of his neck a little.

The pillow behind him suddenly humped up and did that. Draco started and glanced at Harry. No, he was asleep. Draco didn't think anyone could fake those shattering snores.

Draco glanced around uneasily. "Thank you?" he asked, because there was no way he could make it a statement. Was Harry's magic watching out for him even when Harry himself was dead to the world?

There was no answer, except the pillow growing a little more comfortable and firmer behind his neck. Draco swallowed and lay back down again, because that made as much sense as anything else.

It was…

That was blazingly beautiful, was what it was.

And it made his Ministry news seem as petty as Draco's aches and pains.

Draco smiled and closed his eyes. _No one can hurt me, not here, with him._


	5. Persephone's Approval

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_Chapter Five—Persephone's Approval_

"I think you were going to tell me something when you came in, but we got so occupied that I forgot what it was."

Harry's voice was thick and lazy, and he was padding around by the fire still naked. Draco, lounging in the bed, examined Harry's arse and found it good. Then he chuckled and rolled over on the pillow that immediately became even more comfortable. At the moment, he thought he would find anything good.

He still felt as though a slight trembling could invade his limbs any second and drop him to the ground. Part of him was still soaring, riding, gasping. Part of him couldn't wait to be like that again.

But he reminded himself that he had come here for a reason, and wrestled his mind back from the vistas that Harry had opened for him. There was another part of him, one that always stood back from what was happening at the moment and thought about something, and he called it to his aid now.

"Yes," he said finally. "My contacts in the Ministry said that a certain law is being passed against you."

"By the Wizengamot?" Harry turned around with a feast that the house-elves must have sent through the fire from the kitchen. His mouth watering, Draco sat up and reached for a scone covered in melted, dripping butter, only for Harry to swat his hand away. Draco glared, and Harry picked up the scone and smiled.

"I want to feed you," he said.

There wasn't a lot Draco could bring up to object to _that_. He leaned back and opened his mouth instead, and Harry broke off a piece of the scone and placed it on his tongue. Draco shut his eyes to eat it. Yes, the butter had soaked into the bread, which itself was fluffy enough to start coming to pieces right away, and altogether the warmth mingled with the delicious melted feeling in his body and made it even _better_.

Draco ate that, and the clotted cream that Harry offered him on his fingers, and then sipped from the cup of tea that Harry held up. Finally, he had to lie back on the bed, his arms folded over his stomach, and shake his head. They hadn't slept _that _long, and Draco had been eating all that day, during dinners with some of his political supporters.

"Not hungry?" Harry began eating himself, not taking his eyes off Draco's face. It made Draco shudder in delight, to feel that searing attention so solely focused on him. "I would have thought you would be, with all the energy we burned up lately."

Draco could feel his face flushing, as warm as the buttered bread. It was ridiculous, because he was an _adult _and one who had chosen to go to bed with Harry entirely of his own free will. But he did clear his throat and said, "I was working off a large dinner when I—when I slept with you."

"Ah." Harry's mouth curved lazily, his eyes growing even brighter, which Draco hadn't known was _possible_. "By the Wizengamot?"

It took Draco a long minute to blink and get back on track, from the conversation they were having to the one that had got sidetracked when Harry approached the bed with food in his hands. Then he nodded. "Yes. They say that they're going to outlaw anyone who accepts you as their Lord."

"What does that mean, exactly?" Harry licked cream from his own fingers, and Draco shifted to throw a leg over his groin. Harry gave him a wicked grin. A second later, the bed tilted, exposing Draco whether or not he wanted to be.

Draco caught his breath, but managed to concentrate on politics. If Harry could, despite having less of a head for it, then he should be able to. He _was _going to be Minister. "They aren't going to let them have jobs in the wizarding world, or homes. Any business is supposed to refuse their money. Their children can't get wands or go to primary school or get adopted in the wizarding world."

Harry's head cocked, and just like that, the warm mask dropped away. Draco heard a hammering at the window and looked out. Persephone was hovering there, her wings shedding curling torrents of blue-black flame.

Harry rose and padded over to let her in, although Draco knew very well that he could have waved a hand and melted the glass away from the window if he wanted to. He never took his eyes from Draco, though, not even when Persephone flew in and settled on his bare shoulder. "That part about the children was specific?"

Draco frowned. "That's what my contacts at the Ministry said." He drew some of the heaped black blankets over his groin. He didn't like the look Persephone was directing at him, as if she was measuring certain parts of his body against her beak.

Harry exhaled hard and scratched beneath Persephone's chin. She nudged him with her crested head and crooned.

"What does she want?" Draco asked, and then he thought he knew. "You want to hurt someone over this?"

"I think they targeted children on purpose," Harry muttered. "They know I want to protect them and that most of my students at Hogwarts aren't of age. This will affect those who go to Hogwarts, too, won't it?" He looked at Draco for the first time since he'd let Persephone come in. His eyes glittered and glowed.

"My contacts weren't that specific," Draco said. "But yes, I think they are ultimately going to try and penalize the people who chose to attend Hogwarts and send their children here, as well."

"Of course they are," Harry said softly.

Draco blinked. For a moment, he thought Harry was changing into a black phoenix himself, or so it seemed. There was a glittering purple aura around his body that spread out in concentric rings, rising and thinning as it went, but his outline also blurred and wavered, and that was alarming enough.

"Harry?"

Something about his voice reached Harry, or made it possible for him to come back. He shook his head, and exhaled, and refocused on Draco. The purple aura disappeared. On his shoulder, Persephone settled down, stared, and then pecked Harry's cheek.

Harry ignored the small stream of blood now flowing down his face, smiling at Draco again. "Thank you," he said. "You reminded me that, after all, I have more things to do than punish the Wizengamot. I did already try that, too. It doesn't seem to have stuck."

"What are you going to do, then?" Draco leaned forwards in interest. He hadn't thought the news that important when he was contemplating it from the perspective of being Harry's lover, but it would affect him as Harry's ally.

Harry stared into the distance for a moment, and Persephone fluffed out her tail. When Harry didn't say whatever it was she wanted him to say, though, she took off and landed on her perch, sulking.

"I'm going to leave them alone," Harry said. "I'm going to let people who want to swear to me swear to me, and grant them full protections as long as they're part of my court. I can even give them jobs. There are dozens of things that could be done around Hogwarts that aren't being done, mostly because I don't have enough people. And of course I'll protect the children who attend."

"What about wands?" Draco had to admit, that was the part of the law that most concerned him. The Ministry had regulated wands to an extent before, limiting the purchase of them to wizards eleven and above, and putting the Trace on underage wizards' wands, but they hadn't interfered like _this. _Ollivander's had always been an independent business. If they tried to do this much to influence the people who swore to Harry, they might do something different to others who opposed their policies, whether or not their allegiance was to Harry.

"The solution to that is pretty simple," Harry said, and only seemed to realize that he needed to explain when Draco looked patiently at him. "There's going to have to be a wandmaker here."

Draco blinked. "They don't grow on trees, you know."

"Neither do wands." Harry turned and strode to his window, looking out over a view that Draco knew the castle changed each day in case Harry grew bored. "But they're made. I'll send owls abroad. There might be a wandmaker who's stifling somewhere. Someone like Ollivander stays in business for a long, long time. I can probably find someone who's been trained as an apprentice but can't open their own business."

"You're talking about making an independent nation here," Draco said, a little dazed. "Your own court and Hogsmeade and Ministry and Diagon Alley in one."

Harry turned to him and raised an eyebrow. "What did you think establishing an independent court would mean, Draco? Of course I have to run the school, but that can't be all I do, not if people start coming here to live and not just work or go to classes."

Draco nodded slowly. "Don't you think this is going a little beyond what you saw at first?"

"Saw?" Harry snorted. "I declared myself Dark Lord without thinking about it. I thought it was the one title that people might be scared enough not to challenge. Hah," he added moodily. "I should have realized that, because it's me, they would have challenged me if I said I was a _Light _Lord. They always have to have someone to fight, and they've been uneasy about me since I was a bloody abused child."

"Your power is rather unique, you know," Draco murmured, seeing a chance to bring up something he had wondered about. "And I don't mean your magic. No one knew about that until recently. Don't you think that they worried about what you might do with your name and fame?"

"I'm not going to use it now," Harry said. "What would be the point? Everyone who needs to hear about me has probably already heard. The Ministry hasn't been able to keep this _quiet_."

Draco shrugged, frowning a little. He didn't know what to say, but the words rolled around on his tongue and finally came out, almost independent of his brain. "I just thought—if you had used some of that power before you became a Dark Lord and set up your court, then maybe you wouldn't have as many problems with the Ministry."

"Maybe not," Harry agreed. "But any decision I make now is always going to be overshadowed by this one. I'm going to be the Dark Lord who used to be the Boy-Who-Lived, not just the Boy-Who-Lived."

Draco nodded in reluctant agreement, and admiration. "And you say that you don't know anything about politics."

Harry tilted his head, a challenging gleam in his eyes. "Everything I know about politics, I learned from people trying to kill me. That might give me some experience, but it rather colors my views, too, don't you think?"

* * *

"Hello, Anne." Harry kept his voice low and calm. Exploding into recriminations against her parents wouldn't help Anne, and she wasn't ready for questions. But if she was going to stay in Hogwarts, she had to know about him. "My name is Harry."

Anne stood beside Hagrid at the door of his house, pale and quiet. She had dark hair, but her face was so white in comparison that it made her look like a vampire. She glanced up at Hagrid once, and he sniffled and patted her on the head. Harry was relieved that he did it lightly, so as not to crush the little girl into the floor.

"And this is Persephone," Harry added. He had thought about leaving Persephone behind, but he had decided he would rather have Anne know about everything that might scare her at once, rather than having it spring out on her later. Knowing Persephone, the springing out might be literal.

The black phoenix on his shoulder stirred. Harry stood calmly, watching as she extended her neck down towards Anne. If she made a move to harm or frighten the girl, then Harry would hit her and hurt her with all the power of his magic.

Persephone had to know that, either because she knew him or because she was picking up the general impression from the aura around him. She examined Anne minutely, from the top of her brown head to the bottom of her feet, still in small Muggle shoes, and then bobbed her head and sat up. Her tail fluffed out, but for once, she didn't drop a load of shit down Harry's back for him to deal with.

Anne stared with open eyes and a rising hand. Harry watched closely. He didn't control Persephone as well as he would like. If Anne touched her, she might decide to strike and deal with the punishment later.

But Anne only whispered, as if it would be bad if anyone heard her, "What kind of bird is _that_?"

Harry smiled. "She's a phoenix." Before Persephone could dig a claw into his collarbone, he added, "Ordinary phoenixes are red, and they don't die. They grow old and then rise again in flames. They're reborn over and over. Persephone is a black phoenix, though. I made her to save my life. I don't know how'll she burn yet."

Anne stared at him, and then at the phoenix again. When she spoke a second time, it was in a whisper that Harry thought was full of awe, not just fear. "Does that mean that you're not going to die, either?"

"I don't know," Harry said. "The first time she burns, I should learn something." He glanced sideways at Persephone, who watched him without fear and without comment. "But I don't really control her. She can help me and protect me, but only when she wants to."

"I want something like that."

"Like a phoenix?" Harry blinked. He doubted that Persephone would agree to be bound to Anne instead of him, and he didn't know that he would want to do it even if she did. It would be like handing Anne a knife slicked in blood and insisting that it was _her _responsibility if she cut herself.

"No," Anne breathed. "Something that can protect me. Not because they have to. Not because—" She faltered and glanced at Hagrid. Harry had to hide a smile, wondering what sorts of things Hagrid had told her about Hogwarts. "Because it wants to."

And Harry nodded, because he could imagine the fierce desire that had invaded her, in a house where she had thought no one would ever come to get her, when she didn't even have the comforting knowledge that the people raising and abusing her weren't her _real _parents that Harry had had. He cupped his hands in front of him and focused his magic into them.

Persephone began to sing. It was an edged song, a noise like that knife Harry had imagined scraping against a whetstone. Anne started back and might have hidden behind Hagrid, but he held her lightly in place.

Harry started out with light. It seemed to him that Anne might want something that would shine in the darkness and could lead her around Hogwarts.

Other than that, he kept his eyes on Anne and let her reactions guide him. He wasn't surprised when she shuddered as the light began to grow into the image of a snake, so instead he bent it and made it the image of a four-legged animal. Anne relaxed. Harry nodded. So a mammal and not a bird, then.

Although wings might be nice. He made pointed wings grow out of its back, and Anne caught her breath and held it.

Harry lowered his head and breathed on the magic, although he could have done it some other way and was doing this mainly for its dramatic potential. The shape swirled and eddied, looking for a second like fire filled with twinkling lights. And then it solidified, and a winged cat, orange with pale white stripes, was curled asleep in Harry's hands.

Anne opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Harry bowed and presented her with the cat, which woke up a moment later. Harry had been half-afraid that he would have to keep guiding it with his mind in its, even if it was a creation of his own magic and split apart from him, but it was fine on its own, like Persephone.

She bit him on the ear. Harry grinned. This time, he knew why. At least he was getting better at reading her moods.

The cat leaped from his hands into Anne's arms. She stared at him and then raised her eyes to Harry. Harry thought he knew why. She had wanted something that would protect her, but this cat looked like an ordinary animal, if a friendly one. It was rubbing its head against Anne's cheek and purring.

"He can fly and find someone to bring if you're in danger," Harry told her quietly. "And watch." He worked his face into the hardest scowl he could and drew back his arm as if he was going to fling magic, although he watched Anne. He wanted to make the cat react, but it was no use if he _really _scared her.

The cat promptly turned around and hissed. It didn't just look bigger, the way a cat fluffing itself up would look, but actually _grew _bigger. The white stripes on its body glowed and folded away from the fur, and turned into jagged knives. It spat at Harry. Its teeth were fangs, now.

"He'll protect you against everybody," Harry told her. "Even me."

Anne buried her face in the cat's fur and held it. She was trembling a little. But then she looked up at him and offered him a smile that trembled a little, too, and Harry knew that he had made the right decision.

Anne would take some time and be afraid and have to deal with the remnants of her abuse just the way Harry had had to, but she was in a good place now, and she had a good protector. She would be all right.


	6. A Hidden Face

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_Chapter Six—A Hidden Face_

"You can't get away with not confronting people forever, you know."

Ron's heavy voice came from behind him. Harry ignored him for a second, still nodding to the wandmaker whose head floated in the fire. His name was Lorraine, and he had his own business, currently in Belgium, that he wasn't anxious to leave, but he had an apprentice he had said might be willing to try England.

"Thank you," Harry said. They'd had to use a Translation Charm, but he was sure it had gone correctly. His magic wouldn't let him mess up something that was so important to the future of Hogwarts, he thought. At least, not while he was in Hogwarts. "Tell him I look forward to his arrival."

Lorraine smiled, bowed once, and disappeared, his beard appearing to puff into an excess of white flame. Persephone looked up briefly from her perch. She had been more interested in fire than usual lately, leading Harry to think her burning day might be near.

He stood up and crossed the room to stroke her back. Persephone snapped at him, a flash of her beak and wings so quick that only the way Harry understood her permitted him to pull his hand back in time. Ron sucked in a sharp breath behind him.

Harry turned around and leaned casually on Persephone's perch. "What do you mean? I had confrontations with Hermione and McGonagall, didn't I?"

Ron grimaced, but didn't say any of the many things Harry was sure he could say about Hermione. "Only the one McGonagall forced on you," he said. "I mean that you can't get away with not attacking the Ministry forever. I'm sure that Malfoy brought you the news of the laws the Wizengamot is trying to pass now."

"Yeah," Harry said. "But I've taught all the lessons I can to the Wizengamot, I think. If the ones about personal loss of control and prestige don't stick, which ones _can _I expect to do it?"

Ron just stared at him in silence, and Harry sighed. "Between people urging me to hold off from interfering in the election, people urging me to attack the Ministry, people telling me not to cause a war in the wizarding world, and people who would be perfectly happy to see me torture their enemies, I'm not sure which advice you want me to pay attention to."

"Who would be perfectly happy to—"

Harry jerked a thumb at Persephone, partially because it was true but partially because he was sure Ron would blame Draco if he didn't. "Tell me, should I listen to her? She's accurate about threats to me, and she made a good emissary to the centaurs. But her instincts aren't the best. I can be a little surer of human people, sometimes. But everyone is convinced that they know what's best, and most of them have good reasons. It seems to come down to who I can trust."

"You trust me, don't you?" Ron's eyes were enormous. "More than anyone?"

Harry nodded. He didn't want to make comparisons between how much he trusted Draco and how much he trusted Ron, especially when those things tended to happen for different reasons and in different ways, and his trust for Hermione was in abeyance right now. He didn't know if she was working against him yet, but he didn't know _anything, _one way or the other.

"All right then. Listen." Ron took a step towards him. "You may think that the Ministry won't care about you setting up a little independent state inside their borders, but they'll attack as soon as they learn what you mean to do. And if more people flee here, where can you put them all?"

Harry did snort at that. "You're worried about people filling up Hogwarts? Out of all the things you _could _be worrying about?"

Ron still had his sense of humor, luckily. A smile sprang to life in his eyes as he chuckled. "All right. You have a fair point. But—say they could live in Hogwarts. How are you going to feed them? Pay them? Give them work? If everyone who could come to you for shelter decides to see if you're serious about it?"

"I don't know _all _the answers yet," Harry said. "But I'm working on a solution to one of the problems you mentioned. Tell me what you think of this." He'd have liked to show the letter to Draco—but he had meetings this morning—or to Briseis—but she was working on an official announcement to the Ministry and the newspapers about his alliances with the centaurs and merfolk. So he gave the letter to Ron instead.

Ron took the letter, glanced from it to Harry, and cocked his head. "Did you write this?"

"Yes," Harry said. "I reckoned they won't care as much as some of the other people I could write to would about pretty words. And everyone who might have helped me was busy."

"I would have helped you," Ron said, and started reading. "I just usually see your handwriting as being messy."

Harry shrugged and petted Persephone again, this time until she tried to take his ring finger off at the knuckle. He thought neat writing would impress the people he was contacting more than a messy scrawl, too, but he thought they could probably interpret that if they wanted to. They must see worse on old documents.

A second later, Ron gasped, hard enough that Harry leaned forwards, a little concerned for the state of his friend's breathing. Ron looked at him, face pale and tongue almost hanging out.

"Harry," he whispered. "You _never_."

Harry half-smiled at him. "Well, there's no reason not to try, is there? I made alliances with the merfolk and the centaurs. And from everything I've learned about them in the past few days, they don't pay much attention to the wizarding governments. They went on functioning under Voldemort's regime the same as they did under the legitimate Ministry. They might accept the offer and they might not, but there's no reason not to ask."

"You're talking about stealing Gringotts under the Ministry's nose," Ron said flatly, waving the letter.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Remind me never to let _you_ write the official biography of my reign. You would fill the whole thing full of melodramatic adjectives when it only _works _if it's simple." That got him an even heartier scowl. "No. All I'm doing is asking the goblins if I could put together a private account and transfer some Galleons into it from my vaults and other people who give me authorization to do so. That could include people who are leaving Diagon Alley for my court, of course. And then they could be paid out of that."

"The goblins would never do that," Ron said, but he eyed the letter uneasily.

"Maybe," said Harry. "Maybe not. But there are things I'm willing to give them. Concessions, the way I've made to the centaurs and the merfolk. Protection if they wanted it. More respect than they would get from ordinary wizards." He paused, and gently took away the edge of his cloak from Persephone's reaching claw. "Maybe even a gift."

"What kind of gift would a goblin value, except money?" Ron shook his head again.

Harry made a sharp gesture with his hand. The walls of Hogwarts had brought him what he was thinking of earlier, but he had left it concealed behind the stones, because seeing it out in the open might lead people off the topic. Now the stones pulled back, and showed the Sword of Gryffindor lying in the middle of a niche in the wall that might have been made for it.

Ron stared at it, then at Harry. Harry shrugged. "I know that they made it for Gryffindor and he didn't really steal it, but they want it back. This could be a way of showing them that I want their goodwill. It could create a debt that they would feel bound to repay."

"But you can't let them have it!" Ron blurted. "It has to be here for a true Gryffindor to pull it from the Hat!"

Harry snorted. "And you think being in Gringotts would keep it from coming back when it was needed?"

Ron hesitated. "Well, no, now that you mention it," he said. "But it's an artifact of the school. Are you going to give it away like it's nothing?"

"No," Harry snapped. "I'm going to give it away like it's something fit to buy money for my people, and maybe underground access to food markets and goblin trading networks, when we start having to worry about buying food and other things."

Ron stared blankly at him. "Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?"

Harry half-grinned and ran his hand through his hair. "I didn't think it through when I jumped ahead and declared myself Dark Lord. Hermione was right about that. But I'm trying to _think _now, and determine what I should have done in the first place. I trust the Sword of Gryffindor to come back if we need it. But I don't trust myself to be able to buy the goblins' aid without it."

Ron bit his lip in silence for a while. Then he handed the letter Harry had written to the goblins back. "I think there's a high chance they'll go for it. But you should be careful, since we _did _break into Gringotts during the war."

Harry shrugged. "If they blame me for that, then I'll make sure to remove all my gold from the bank as soon as possible, and advise anyone else who wants to live in my court to do the same. And then I'll figure out something else."

"It's war, no matter what happens." Ron's voice was soft, his eyes troubled. "You know that, don't you? War with Gringotts if you tell people to take their money out of the bank. War with the Ministry if you succeed in negotiating with the goblins. You're telling them that you'll succeed in living your way, or you'll fall."

"I'm aware of the risk." Harry spread his hands. "I just don't think it's unlike the risks I've been taking so far. I'll do what I need to do to increase my people's safety and what they can keep, instead of give up, when they come to me. If that brings me into open conflict with the Ministry or Gringotts, fine. I can only offer what I can offer."

"Will you ever act instead of react?" Ron said.

Harry had to give a short laugh. "What is this letter going to be?"

Ron shook his head, his hair rustling. "You're reacting to what the Ministry did to you, or what they're going to do when they pass this law. That's not the same thing as taking an action that-I don't know, makes a declaration."

"I made a declaration when I proclaimed myself Dark Lord," Harry said. "You might as well claim that everything the Ministry has done since then is a reaction to me."

"But you only did that because they were going to close down Hogwarts," Ron said. "It still doesn't count."

Harry laughed and held up his hands. "You're cleverer than I am. So go prove it. Make any changes that you think you need to to the letter, and then bring it back to me. In the meantime, I have a history class to teach." He was introducing some fifth-years to the history of the first war with Voldemort today. He'd only had a brief chance to revise the books himself, but if worse came to worse, he could tell the story of how it had ended. The tale of his mother's heroism was one that he never got tired of telling.

Ron sighed hard enough to make his lips ruffle. "Fine. I don't know that this is the best thing to do, but you're right, I can't think of anything better."

Harry clapped his shoulder, grabbed his books, and went out the door. Persephone stirred once as if she would follow him, then settled back on the perch.

Harry was glad. She caused him enough problems without deciding to set someone in the classroom on fire for fun.

* * *

"Minister...ial _Candidate _Malfoy."

Draco let himself grin like a wolf as he reached out to grasp Azalina Rahad's hand. She was a medium-tall witch with brown skin, dark hair that she wore pulled back right now with a few silver clips, and eyes that watched him, waiting for some response. "Commander Rahad. Looking forward to the day that promotes a change of title?"

"As are you, it seems." Rahad's hand briefly tightened on his. "I do not bear that title."

"Not at all," Draco said, and turned to escort her further into the party. He had nearly filled the great dining room of Malfoy Manor. Supporters of Tillipop circulated everywhere, caged and chased and chivvied by his own. Some people would leave here tonight converted, and others would leave scared, and others bribed. Draco didn't much care which, as long as Tillipop's more powerful supporters stopped being a threat. "I give you that which you've earned, by right."

Rahad gave him a tight smile. Draco smiled back, more naturally. So Rosenthal's information about Rahad being in line for promotion in the Custodes, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement's semi-secret corps that focused on protecting wizarding Britain's interests in international politics, was true. And that meant so was the information that Tillipop had turned her down for the command, saying that they didn't need "anyone foreign-looking" of a high rank among the Custodes.

Draco could have shaken his head over Tillipop's blindness, but he didn't. It was the kind of thing that a lot of "normal" wizards, the group that Tillipop hoped to appeal to, would think. And Tillipop had counted on that group to help him into the election.

The problem was, the Ministry, the group that should have done the most to help the Minister, was no longer one with Tillipop in anything except perhaps fear of Harry. And there were people like Rahad who wouldn't care about that, as long as something got _done_.

"I do think that it's a privilege to be here," Rahad murmured, extending a hand to pluck a glass off a tray carried by a house-elf. "And to receive an invitation that was not worded as were your invitations to some of my colleagues."

Draco veiled his eyes with lowered lids. "Is it my fault that some of them mistrust me so much they would not come except if they could take it as a challenge?"

"Not your _fault_," Rahad said consideringly, as she sipped the champagne in the glass. Several small amulets bound here and there in the folds of her robes flashed a bit, neutralizing any poison or potion that might have been in the champagne. She had worn them openly enough for Draco to see, and that told Draco exactly what her balance was in the delicate dance they were doing. "Your choice, perhaps."

Draco smiled at her. "I think that your willing acceptance and my willing invitation augur good things for the future."

Rahad smiled back and bowed a little, moving away. Draco followed her track with his eyes and smiled again when he saw where she was going. Jackson Tudor had been a thorn in his side, because while he didn't like Tillipop much, he kept insisting that no one who had done _anything _wrong in the past should be in the Ministry, or Minister, or a member of the Wizengamot, or any other position of power. And he had an annoyingly clean past.

Rahad was the thorn in _his _side, though, and if she could provoke Tudor into a public argument, then his reputation would have the beginnings of a stain.

"Candidate Malfoy."

Draco turned around, wondering who the next person was that he needed to greet. Rosenthal hadn't bothered giving him a list for the party tonight, telling him there were too many important targets, and she would have to trust him to know which ones needed his personal attention and which didn't sometime.

His interest sharpened when he realized that this witch wore a thick cloak, one with red embroidery around the black hood. That might mean she was an Unspeakable or Auror reluctant to show her face. If his campaign had reached that deep, then they had done better than Draco had expected this early on.

He reached for a glass of champagne and held it out to her, but the woman shook her head so frantically that Draco raised his brows and retained it for himself. "I do not know you," he said. "Will you give me a sign so I will know who you are?"

_And not an enemy, _was the unspoken corollary to those words. On the other hand, Draco wasn't much worried. He had not only allies but some defenses that only Rosenthal knew about within his beck and call.

The woman hesitated, and cast a rapid Privacy Charm around them, before reaching immediately for her hood. Draco nodded his approval. She couldn't retain the Privacy Charm for too long without causing unwanted curiosity.

He felt both nod and smile freeze when her hood fell to her shoulders.

"Look," said Hermione Granger, staring at him. "I need to know what you're doing, and what you _really _mean to do when you're Minister, and whether you're influenced by Harry."


	7. A Gift to the Goblins of Gringotts

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seven—A Gift to the Goblins of Gringotts_

Draco raised his wand and cast a few spells of his own. One dissipated Granger's Privacy Charm. They couldn't have that up for long, or it would attract more attention than it would ever deflect.

Granger opened her mouth—to shout, Draco thought—when the charm fell, but then she seemed to feel the mask of a glamour settling on her face. That, in itself, wasn't unusual. Some of the Ministry employees coming to speak with Draco were high-ranking and wouldn't want anyone who saw them to know who they were.

Granger bit her lip and glanced up at him, then turned her eyes back to the floor. "Thanks," she mumbled.

Draco inclined his head and held out his arm, angling it at the precise crook that a pure-blood man should use when offering to escort a pure-blood woman. He and Granger were the only ones here who knew, or should be the only ones who did, that she wasn't one of those. "Would you like to go out into the garden?" he asked, raising his voice enough that the people hovering nearby and waiting to talk to him could hear. "The view is stunning. And I think the clear air might help you to recover your breath." Another excuse for being alone.

Granger's eyes fluttered once, in the uncertain manner that Draco was more used to seeing from Rosenthal than her. Then she breathed out and took his arm. "I'd like that," she murmured back, and if Draco's glamour hadn't concealed her voice, Draco doubted that anyone there knew her well enough to notice the mismatch between it and her face.

Draco almost hovered over her as they stepped through the heavy glass doors, open in honor of the party, and out into the garden. That was etiquette, too, although Draco had thought that a woman who'd grown faint in the heavy air of a crowded ballroom shouldn't have people _breathing _into her face. His mother had only frowned at him when he brought it up and said that was the way it worked, and as he had been raised to be polite, he would do it if he ever had to be alone with a pure-blood woman in such a situation.

And his mother had a way of getting what she wanted, Draco thought wryly. Not unlike the woman on his arm, who kept her steps slow and gentle until they reached a patch of night-blooming pale flowers surrounded by low brick walls. Draco leaned down as if to pluck her a flower, but really brushed a brick with one finger that made another, more subtle, Privacy Charm spring up. Now they would be able to speak freely, and no one would be able to approach them within five hundred feet without warning.

"I plan to do lots of things when I'm Minister," he said, straightening up and turning to face her. "And I think Harry will only have as much influence on those plans as the resident Dark Lord of Hogwarts should have."

"I know it's more than that," said Granger, and her eyes were so dark that Draco kept himself from taking hold of his wand only by asserting reason over his instincts. "I saw the way he looked at you when you were under that mind control spell and he was researching ways to wake you up."

_So she does have more knowledge than I thought she did. Wonderful. _For a moment, Draco wondered why Harry hadn't told him that, but it was easy enough to guess. Harry had never thought Granger would seek Draco out.

Draco looked down into her eyes and said gently, "Shouldn't you be rejoicing that the next Minister has a reason to leave your best friend alone, instead of persecuting him?"

Granger turned away, stooping over the night-blooming flowers as if admiring them. Or maybe it was to hide her eyes while her breath came out in a hiss. "I know _very well _that you would be an unjust Minister if you were focused on him."

Draco blinked. He blinked again. Granger looked up at him again as those blinks passed by, apparently wanting to see his reaction.

Then Draco began to choke with laughter. He cast another spell that would muffle it more strongly, because there were people here who would give a great deal to know what made him laugh, and he had no intention of placing another weapon into their hands. But he had to lean against a small, slender tree nearby to try and stop choking, and it just _didn't work. _On and on it went, his little gasps and cries, while Granger stared at him, looking first bewildered and then furious.

"What—what did you think I would do if I wasn't involved with Harry?" Draco finally gasped, leaning forwards, wheezing. He made the words come out around the laughter, though. He would have to get back to the party soon, and Granger was Gryffindor enough to stomp in there and denounce him if he waited too long. "Of course I'm not going to be fair and just the way a Gryffindor thinks I should be."

He straightened up and shook his head at Granger. "My dear girl, what the Ministry needs is someone who knows what is _important. _Tillipop has offered his friends plum positions and engaged in nepotism. That's expected, really. But he's carried it too far, and started to obsess over his personal enemies and use Ministry resources to punish _them, _even when they're useful or important in the political structure. You can see that in the way that he kept sending Aurors after Harry, when it was stupid to do so. You bribe your enemies or make truces or eliminate them by turning up scandals from their pasts if you're Minister, you don't just smash them. As someone intelligent I spoke to earlier said, we need a Minister with a sense of style. I have it."

Granger was so pale that Draco would have offered her a drink and a chair if she'd been a different person. As it was, he doubted that she would be appreciative if he did. So he waited, and a second later she snapped out of her shock.

"But that means you'll favor Harry," she whispered. "Give him a Ministry position?"

"_No_," said Draco, exasperated. Honestly. He'd heard that Granger had been working with and against the Ministry for the same length of time as Harry and Weasley. That meant she should have some idea how things worked. She might not approve of them, she might want to change them, but she should know how her enemies thought.

_Then again, she didn't even know how her best friend thought, or she wouldn't have turned against him with visions of him becoming an all-powerful Dark Lord. _

"I can't give him anything like that," Draco continued, when he saw Granger paying attention to him. "I know that. He's too much the Ministry's open enemy right now, and we're going to have to meet in secret. I don't think we can ever reveal that we have a relationship, at least not in the conventional sense of the word. What I can do is try to ease tensions between him and the Ministry, and that would be beneficial for the people I'm supposed to lead as well as him. That's what I'll do."

Granger straightened up. She had thrown off her fainting fit as if it had never threatened. Draco had to admire her for that, though perhaps for nothing else. She could cause trouble like no one else, he thought, except perhaps Weasley. And Weasley had chosen not to leave Harry's side.

"I thought you needed someone," Granger whispered. "That you were a helpless victim of his influence, and would welcome someone else interfering."

"That was your first mistake, then," Draco said, looking at her with half-lidded eyes, no longer seeing a need to keep the thick contempt from his voice. "Malfoys are never _helpless_."

Granger shook her head. "The wizarding world needs a _real _Minister. Someone who will keep the needs of both humans and magical creatures in mind. Someone who will know how to resist Harry and keep the world from falling under the dominion of a Dark Lord."

Draco rolled his eyes in spite of himself. It seemed nothing he could say would make any difference to her. Even telling the truth didn't. So he might as well show everything else openly, too. "Planning to run yourself?"

Granger gaped at him. "What? No. I wouldn't want a position so steeped in corruption—"

She stopped.

Draco watched her, and let his smile widen further when he saw the way she stared at his flowers. "Yes," he said softly. "You pictured yourself as the rescuer of an innocent wizarding world who needed you, but it's more than that, isn't it? It's more complicated than that. You're smart enough to understand. The Ministry functions that way because the people who work for it _want _it to, and there is always going to be a certain amount of corruption inside it. I must admit," he let himself add in a musing voice, "I'm glad Harry chose to be a Dark Lord instead of hanging around the Ministry and trying to clean up the corruption in it. He never could have succeeded without destroying everyone's free will, and that would have broken his heart."

Granger jerked her head up. "That's not true! He's trying to destroy their free will anyway, just from the outside!"

Draco's amusement, and his admiration, fled. "That is _enough_," he said, his voice deepening into a hiss that made Granger back up a step and look as if she would reach for her wand. Of course, if she did, there would be house-elves on her in seconds. Maybe she knew that, because she kept her hand trembling at her side, but didn't actually complete the gesture.

"If he was going to do that," Draco continued, "he would have done it already, and you would have been his first victim. One of his best friends? Who accused him to his face and proposed to leave him? You don't think he would have fallen to the temptation to keep you at his side, if he was going to fall?"

Granger shook her head. "But that _power…_you don't understand, Malfoy. What he could do with it…"

"I do know," Draco said, rolling his eyes. It was too bad that some of the things he could have told her about Harry's power and the gentle way he treated Draco were secrets too intimate for him to want to give up. "He could make me into a puppet. He could burn the Ministry to the ground. And _he doesn't. _I don't know if he could ever convince you, because you see potential for abuse as the same thing as abuse, but that's what it's like. He wants to remain the way he is, without corrupting anyone's mind, and that's the way he will be. If he has enough power to control everyone, he has enough to control his own actions."

Granger just stared at him, eyes shadowed. Then she said, "But he _could_."

"And I have the power to compel one of my house-elves to start smashing its face into these bricks until its brain is pulped," Draco said coldly. "It doesn't mean I would."

Granger looked sick. "That—that has to be stopped, too. I—"

"I understand a lot more about you now," Draco said conversationally, taking a step towards her. "Both about what you fought for and why you left Harry. It's not the intentions that you care about, is it? Or the actions, that most other people pay attention to. It's the _power_, and the fact that that power exists, that you want to destroy."

Granger stood still, as though she could sense the trap waiting for her beneath Draco's words but not see it. "I don't think all power should be destroyed," she said at last. "Power can do great things, like give people _freedom _and a true _future_." She glared at Draco as if he would agree with her to get her glare out of his face. "That's the kind I want to preserve. But you won't give people that. Neither will Harry."

"Of all the people alive, you're doubting _him_?" Draco shook his head. "Your best friend? The one who already died to give people freedom and a future, as you put it?"

"He's growing more reckless lately," Granger said, her hands entwining until Draco could see white spots standing out on the shiny red skin. "Your influence, probably. I don't know what he might do."

Draco nodded, understanding something else. "And the uncertainty drives you mad," he whispered to her, gently. "If you knew that he was evil, you wouldn't feel so tormented. But you don't know what he'll do, what he's capable of, and you can't stand that. So you distance yourself from him and tell yourself it's for the best.

"If you were close, you could influence him, keep him on the Gryffindor path that you insist is the most moral. But you won't trust him enough to do that, will you? Instead, you keep stepping back, because you don't have an answer either to what he might do or the limits on his magic."

Draco edged towards her. "The limits on it are his will and his morals. You're making both worse if you continue opposing him because of imaginary situations that might never happen. You erode his ability to trust other people. You make him think that there's something wrong with him because he chooses to _trust _and _love. _Simply because you disapprove of who he chose to do that with." He smirked. "So if he turns against the wizarding world and starts corrupting people and taking their free will, we would have you to blame, more than anyone else."

With a small cry, Granger turned and fled from him. Draco waved his hand so that the people he could see starting forwards around the edges of the garden, security that he was paying for the occasion, would let her go. There was nothing to gain from delaying Granger here. Draco hoped that she would go away and listen to the poisoned memory of his words in her mind.

That might be the best way to convince her that what she had done was, after all, ridiculous.

Glad that he had been able to accomplish something for Harry's sake even in the middle of his own campaign party, Draco turned back to his guests.

* * *

"Griphook?"

Harry thought it was, but he wasn't good at distinguishing one goblin from another. And he really hadn't expected the goblins to come to Hogwarts. He had thought that they would summon him to Gringotts.

If he got an answer to his letter, rewritten with Ron's help, at all. It was possible that they would decide not to do anything except turn his letter over to the Ministry, or the letter would vanish into the muddle of all the documents they must have relating to human accounts, less important than the vast majority of them.

Instead, Blackthorne had come flying to him with the news that several goblins were coming down the road from Hogsmeade, before they had reached the point where Harry's wards would alert him that they were there. Now Hogwarts hummed beneath their feet, the stones of the entrance hall trembling a little. The school hadn't decided if it liked them yet.

Probably because Harry hadn't decided if he trusted them yet. He folded his arms and regarded them skeptically, waiting.

"You said that you were willing to give us the Sword of Gryffindor." Griphook's claws twitched, and then smoothed down again. His face was utterly inscrutable, and he looked as if he was sitting in on one of the meetings that Harry imagined were inevitable in running Gringotts. "Where is it?"

"I'll do it if you say that you'll fulfill the terms I set out in my letter," Harry retorted, and waved a hand, so that a stone pedestal rose from the rock right beside him. On top sat the Sword. Griphook continued to focus on Harry, but Harry thought it was an effort. The other five goblins with him stared at the Sword, trembling a little like hounds on the leash.

"We will fulfill them," Griphook said, and held up a stone shaped like a leaning triangle that flashed and glittered with shades of blue and white. "We are prepared to swear on this."

"What is it?" Blackthorne, Harry's Knight, snapped behind him before Harry could speak.

"A Stone of the Contract." It was Briseis, standing at Harry's right shoulder, who answered, her voice low and heavy to let Harry know this was important. "A vow sworn on it obliges the goblin, or wizard, who does it to keep their word. Otherwise, their magic is substantially weakened."

Harry nodded. He could understand how it showed the goblins were serious. They wouldn't want to weaken the magic that guarded the bank, and he wouldn't want to weaken the power that was his people's main defense, either. "How do you swear on it?"

"Blood," said Griphook. He sounded satisfied, as Harry had anticipated, but his eyes were locked on the Sword anyway. He wanted it enough that he wasn't taking pleasure in forcing Harry to swear a vow like this. It was just the instrument of how he would _get _what he wanted.

"Like this?" Harry asked, and held out his hand. In moments, Persephone was on his shoulder, flicking out of a shadow suddenly enough to make the goblins in front of him jerk. Harry didn't take pleasure in that, any more than Griphook did in the vow, but he had to admit that it was a lot harder for him than it probably was for Griphook.

Persephone's beak jabbed into his hand, locking on the thin web between his thumb and second finger, and for a second, she drank, sinking into and widening the wound. Then she lifted her head and shook it back and forth. The blood splattered on the Stone of the Contract, and the blue and white colors glowed and shifted like clouds and sky mingled.

Then Persephone turned to face Griphook, and crouched a little. Griphook had already sliced his palm open with his own claws, though. Persephone sighed and flared her tail as Griphook smeared his blood on the stone.

Harry half-bowed his head as he felt the vow settle around him, like chains. "You have the Sword of Gryffindor," he said, his tongue thick. "And we have permission to have a pooled vault, with anyone who wants to having no trouble adding to it."

"We do," said Griphook. "You do." He reached up and gripped the Sword's hilt. There was an expression of bliss on his face.

Harry stepped back and bowed. He wondered for a moment if the vow would be broken if the Sword came back to Hogwarts to assist a Gryffindor in need.

But he didn't think so. He'd discussed the terms of the promise with Briseis beforehand, and she would have warned him if there was something different about the Stone of the Contract from the other methods of making the promise that she'd thought the goblins might use.

In the meantime, Harry had a vault to clear out.


	8. Publish and Be Damned

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eight—Publish and Be Damned_

"There's someone in the fire for you, Ministerial Candidate Malfoy."

Draco stood at once. Rosenthal's voice was smooth and light, but there was a heaviness to her brow, a hoodedness to her eyes, that alerted him that this was no ordinary firecall. Besides, he was with Rahad and a few other trusted allies. If Rosenthal had thought it ordinary, she would have announced the name.

"If you will excuse me," Draco said, and bowed from the waist, making sure to direct most of the bow towards Rahad, not as the senior Ministry official present in the room, but as the one he had promised the most to after his election and who had promised the most in return. "This may be important."

Rahad smiled and leaned back in the chair, saluting him a little with a glance that said she knew all about subordinates deciding that something was more important than it really was. Draco ducked his head in humility that he knew she knew was false, but it looked good, and then walked out of the sitting room to see what Rosenthal wanted.

She waited for him in the corridor with her face gone pale. Draco cast a charm that would add color to her features in case they passed anyone else asking her for guidance; there were several parties of strangers wandering the Manor this morning, the lesser Ministry flunkies whom Rosenthal and a few of his less important advisers were entertaining.

"Harry?" Draco asked. Harry, with bad news, was the only person he could think of who could have made Rosenthal look like that.

Rosenthal shook her head. Draco was glad to see that her hands had stopped shaking and her face, while still unnaturally white even with the glamour charm, had gone from strained to composed. "Minister Tillipop," she said.

Draco stared at her. But he knew Rosenthal wouldn't lie, and although she might be fooled by someone with a glamour claiming to be the Minister, Draco couldn't see who would do that. Easy enough to check later if it was and they also managed to fool Draco himself. Tillipop wasn't known for making his moves subtle or hard to detect.

"Very well," he said, and moved down the corridor in the direction of the sitting room that Rosenthal indicated. "Please give my excuses to Rahad and the others."

Rosenthal nodded, then closed her eyes, probably to help her summon up the right words in her mind. Draco didn't envy her. He had the harder task, but Rosenthal was more badly shaken by the circumstance of the Minister firecalling him than Draco was.

Draco _did _have to admit that along with the worry, he walked into the sitting room with curiosity burning up his chest. What could Tillipop have to say to him, through this relatively private and discreet form of communication? He was the type to announce his moves at the top of his lungs, especially if he thought there was every chance of them working. And he wasn't smart enough to figure out what _didn't _work.

"Ministerial Candidate Malfoy?"

The words were expertly pronounced, which eliminated drunkenness and most glamours. It was hard to cast an auditory glamour that would fool someone who knew the Minister's voice well, as Draco did. Draco didn't discount Polyjuice yet, though. He shut the door of the sitting room behind him and nodded to the face floating in the fire. "Tillipop," he said, not seeing the need to use a title of respect that would be removed from the man soon enough. "You had something you wished to say to me?"

Tillipop licked his lips. Draco inched the chance of this being the man himself higher on his mental probability scale. Polyjuice gave you the voice and the looks, but not innate mastery over the habits and gestures of the person you were imitating.

"We both know that we need to stop playing games," Tillipop said.

Draco sat down in front of the fireplace, in a chair he had placed the proper distance away to communicate but not get ashes on himself, and crossed his legs as he smiled at Tillipop. "But all of politics is a game," he said. "If you wish to remove yourself from the board, of course, you have only to say so. Announce your retirement instead of your running in the election."

Tillipop clenched his jaw hard enough that Draco heard a popping sound. Then he took a deep breath, and gave Draco a smile that could have been mistaken as indulgent by someone stupider than Draco. "We both know that I hold the winning hand."

"I wasn't aware that this was cards," Draco said softly.

Tillipop looked now as if he wished that he would have had someone else handle this firecall instead. But he shook his head and moved forwards into the threats that Draco had already been expecting. "_Mr. _Malfoy. You know that we have damaging evidence of the connection you have with Dark Lord Potter, and that we can publish that damaging evidence."

Draco didn't move, didn't start, didn't flinch. There was always the possibility that someone else would have betrayed him—maybe Blaise, whose mother had been punished by Harry—or that someone would have put two and two together and claimed to have decisive evidence. "You caught me," he said.

Tillipop gaped at him.

"I did indeed donate some money to Hogwarts." Draco cast his eyes down and sighed sadly. "And invited him to dine with my parents. I was afraid that my dirty secrets must come out at last."

"_Mr_. Malfoy!" From the sound of it, something expensive had broken in the room behind Tillipop. Draco hoped it was because someone else with him was staggering about with laughter. "You know what I mean. Your friendship, and his funding of your campaign."

_Stop. Wait. _Draco wanted to laugh aloud, but he maintained his mask without much difficulty. He had been through harder attempts to crack his mask when it came to his father. Admittedly, he hadn't been through many trials as _hilarious _as this. _They've got hold of the stick by the wrong end, haven't they? _

Draco leaned further back in the chair, and blinked. "What about his funding of my campaign?"

Tillipop laughed, the kind of laugh that said he was master of the situation and everyone else would have to bow down to him. _The poor fool, _Draco thought. _The only reason he became Minister at all was to be a useful puppet to some people, and now that he's not useful anymore, he's been abandoned to his fate. _"We know that he was at Gringotts yesterday, rearranging his vaults. What does that mean but that he was taking some money out to give to your campaign?"

"You could contact him and ask him, of course," Draco said. "I don't think he's lied yet about his intentions."

Tillipop sneered at him. "I'm asking _you_."

Draco dipped his head. He would have to send a letter to Harry, of course, partially because he thought he knew what Harry was doing at Gringotts but he didn't _know_, and partially to make sure that this tactic wouldn't backfire. But the chance to ask the question and bait the Minister into a trap was too rich to be resisted. "I'm so _honored _that you're asking me, Minister, but honestly, I'm not sure that I can help you. Maybe it would be better if you published the information and we could see what light the general public could throw on the situation."

"This is _blackmail_, you fool," said Tillipop, unexpectedly loud. "Do you _realize _that?"

_And that Pensieve memory, Minister, just cost you the campaign. _But Draco kept himself leaning back in the chair, and just shook his head a little. "You've published many things already that hurt the Dark Lord Potter worse, and still he's limited his retaliation against you. Do you want to publish this? Go ahead."

Tillipop did some more staring. Draco looked back at him. _Of course he doesn't understand what I'm playing at. He was never a professional politician, but he's facing one. _Training at Lucius Malfoy's knee was excellent preparation for a life in politics.

Finally, Tillipop said, "You'll be sorry that you didn't accede to my request."

Draco smiled. "Was that a threat? Or did you already make the threat?"

There was an inrush of flame, and Tillipop vanished from his hearth. Draco leaned forwards and pressed his fingers to his forehead, taking a minute to revise his actions and make sure that he hadn't done something that could get him in trouble.

But no, he was pretty sure he hadn't. The Minister would publish this, and the goblins of Gringotts would explain what had _really _happened—the goblins had no reason not to—and Tillipop would look even stupider.

Of course, the success of that strategy depended on Draco going and spending some time with Harry to warn him about the impending article.

Draco grinned. _Luckily, that's no trouble at all._

* * *

Harry smiled, but kept his eyes on his notes for now. The ripple of joy that had run through Hogwarts, the shutters flying open in empty rooms and then closing again, the suddenly straining branches of the trees, the breath of health and happiness in musty corridors, told him well enough who had come through the fire. But for now, he would let Draco have his little surprise.

Hands wrapped around his eyes, and Draco's voice murmured, "Guess who?"

"My secret boyfriend?" Harry responded promptly. "Careful, you want to hurry out of here before you run into my other lover, the one who's running for Minister."

Draco snorted and spun his chair around. Harry went with it, glad for once that Briseis had insisted on casting spells on the chair that would allow it to turn easily. Harry could have done that with his own magic, but it eased her boredom in this pause between major actions, and a bored Slytherin was a dangerous one.

He was forcibly reminded of that when Draco climbed into his lap and whispered, "Are you busy, or can you spare some time for your _first _secret boyfriend?"

"For you? Always." Harry slid his hands up Draco's neck and into his hair, kissing him. He felt his magic slide and brighten, and there was a disgusted flapping of wings outside his window that told him Persephone was flying away. She had taken to bringing small animals in from the Forbidden Forest lately and artistically arranging their corpses on his pillow, but she would have to go off and eat the latest one by herself.

"Wow," Draco said, sounding simply and happily dazed, as he surfaced from the latest kiss, blinking.

"Did you come here to make love, or for something more serious?" Harry turned towards the bed, which hopped up on sudden, new toes and jolted towards them, anxious to be of service.

"Something more serious, unfortunately." Draco tightened a hand in Harry's hair and sighed. "Tillipop found out that you did some sort of rearrangement of vaults at Gringotts. He contacted me threatening to publish the information that you'd been funding my campaign." He cocked an eyebrow at Harry. "As though he knew the exact size of the Malfoy vaults. Fool. I told him to publish and be damned. Was I right?"

The undercurrent of anxiety in Draco's voice made Harry smile. He kissed Draco again, hard enough to make him wriggle, and murmured into his ear, "You did exactly right. We'll make Tillipop _squirm_."

"Not in the same way as me, hopefully," Draco said, and widened his legs over Harry's lap.

"Never in the same way," Harry promised, and slid his hand down to Draco's groin. "I only want you. Along with, you know, my people safe and possible eventual world domination—no, wait, that's my evil twin in the _Daily Prophet. _I want the first two things. And the second is all right for now, so…" And he kissed Draco again.

Giving himself to Harry's strokes, his eyes rolling back in his head and his body falling gracefully into the rhythm, made Draco one of the most beautiful things Harry had ever seen. Watching the expressions flit and change across his face meant more than watching the sunrise. There was nothing dark about him, in any sense, only simple surrender, simple pleasure.

Out in the Forest, he knew, Persephone was probably vomiting from the sweetness. Or relieving her feelings by tearing something small and crunchy to bits.

Harry snickered, and stroked faster.

* * *

Draco couldn't believe the soaring feelings in his own chest. He had thought he had enjoyed flying when he was sitting on his broom, but it was nothing compared to this, to the sheer abundance of _delight_.

He hadn't felt it that much, he thought woozily, as he wobbled back and forth on Harry's lap and Harry steadied him with an arm across his back, then continued moving his hand in the _best _way. His father had always said there was contentment and glee in politics, but no happiness. That had been in the nature of a warning when Draco announced that he intended to pursue a career as Minister. Lucius seemed concerned that happiness was something that Draco would miss.

Maybe it would have been. But now…

_Harry_, Draco thought, his head bowing forwards until his brow touched Harry's shoulder, and his hair rustled in a rhythm that told him just how hard and fast and _well_ Harry was stroking him. Harry kissed him and murmured into his ear, and it didn't matter that the words weren't audible.

_Harry, _Draco thought again, and came.

Harry hissed in satisfaction, a literal hiss, and raised his hand to his mouth. Draco stared at him in surprise. He hadn't even realized that Harry had unbuttoned his robes, and so Draco had exploded over Harry's fingers instead of inside cloth.

Harry held his eyes. Draco stared back, feeling like a bird before a snake. Well, that was appropriate, given that Harry could speak Parseltongue.

But in this case, it seemed that Harry had only wanted to make sure that Draco was watching, not to hypnotize him. Because he stuck out his tongue and swept it down his fingers in a long, impressive lick, humming under his breath.

Draco shuddered all over. If it wasn't that he felt utterly spent, he was sure he could have gone again. Instead, he managed to reach behind himself, or under, and then shift forwards again when he realized exactly where in Harry's lap he was. Harry smiled and rolled his hips, offering himself up to Draco's fumbling grip as if he couldn't imagine anything better.

It seemed the enchantment that had guided Draco's steps so far this day, though, letting him make the right decision with Tillipop and enjoy this interlude with Harry, had come to an end, because the door to the office opened.

Draco scrambled, but Harry held him still, and turned to face the door with a calm gaze. Draco cleared his throat and reminded himself that Hogwarts would have told Harry who was coming long before they arrived. He did try to make sure that his cock was out of sight, though.

Especially when he saw that Granger, pale and nervous, was the one who stood in the doorway. At least her gaping at him and Harry made a change from her nervousness, which Draco would have found tiresome to deal with.

"Harry," Granger whispered. "I thought—I thought I'd try and see if you still had an exception for me in the wards, and now…" She trailed off. Draco decided she was trying to look at the ceiling and away from them to spare them all some embarrassment, but she also didn't want to remove her eyes from her best friend's face.

"There's always an exception for you," Harry said, and his eyes were wise and his smile infectious. He put out a hand to Granger, and she blinked at him and muttered something about having to send a letter instead.

Draco could sense how precarious the balance in the room was. His words might have made Granger consider better, but she had probably come here without a plan, except testing the wards the way she had talked about. She hadn't come here to _talk _to Harry, but she hadn't come here not to talk to him, either. She could flee any second if she decided that the fortunes of the moment were against her, and she might not come back.

_Just like a Gryffindor, _Draco thought. _Jump right in, because lack of a plan can't _possibly _hurt them, right? _

Granger shut her eyes and swallowed. Then she opened her eyes again, and whispered, "H-Harry?"

"I still need you," Harry said, his voice deep, his eyes never moving from her face. "I still would welcome you back. But we need to have a good long _talk _about what we both believe, and maybe make each other some promises."

Granger's face looked on the verge of crumbling. Draco quickly and quietly picked up his wand. He knew what was best. He would Apparate himself home, which he could easily do through the exceptions in the wards that Harry had built in for him. Someone like Granger could walk into the school without tripping the guards; Draco was the only one other than Harry and Weasley who could Apparate in and out of the office.

But Harry caught his hand without seeming to look at him, and said, "Let Draco and me get into a less compromising position, and then we can _talk,_ Hermione."

Granger nodded, her eyes squinting as though she was trying to keep back sunlight—or tears. Harry turned to Draco and smiled at him.

"Your choice," he said. "Stay or go. I just didn't want you to feel as though you had to leave."

"All things considered," Draco said carefully, "it might be best."

That won him the smile that was Harry's alone, and Harry leaned up to kiss him delicately on the cheek. "Goodbye," he whispered. "Remember you owe me one."

"The kind of debt I enjoy owing, and the only one I do," Draco said, for Granger's benefit, and carefully stood up and prepared himself and his clothes before he Apparated away, the last thing he felt under his hand the touch of his lord and lover's shoulder.


End file.
